The best moment of Rowan Crothers’ life came a day after winning his gold medal.
The night prior, the former VALORANT pro emerged from the pool at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre in Japan with his arms outstretched and a shocked look on his face. After more than a decade of daily training, he’d done it. He’d reached a goal Crothers set for himself at 10 years old, sitting alongside his mom watching the TV: a gold medal in the Paralympic Games.
The victor in the Men’s 50m Freestyle – S10 event climbed atop one of the pool’s lane dividers, screaming towards the cameras in celebration as his parents watched from home in Australia.
The celebration showcased the competitive side of Crothers – the fierce, relentless determination to overcome any demanding obstacle. The next second, as the pool divider gave way and Crothers tumbled backward into the pool with a toothy grin, the other side of his personality shined. A “gentle giant,” one of his friends said of the 23-year-old. The kind and humorous boy always thinking about the person next to him, now in the imposing frame of a 6-foot-5 man.
The hours following the race were a mixture of bliss and adrenaline. “You don’t sleep after winning a gold medal,” Crothers said. Finally, as the sun caught the sky, he made it back to his room for rest at the Paralympic Village, situated on the waterfront district of Tokyo, the famed Rainbow Bridge in the distance as he dozed off.
When he awoke hours later, an avalanche of messages awaited him on his phone. Texts from childhood classmates that he hadn’t heard of in years. Congratulations from people around the world, a majority of whom he had never met before. But as Crothers scrolled through the exorbitant amount of photo tags, well wishes and articles about himself, his eye caught one that made him freeze.
It was from a mother who had watched the Paralympics with her young son, who had cerebral palsy like Crothers. After seeing Crothers win the race and receive his gold medal, the boy felt enough confidence to ask his mom if he could try riding a bike for the first time in his life.
“If Rowan can do it, I can do it too,” the boy told his mother.
Crothers dropped his phone, tears unwillingly welling up in his eyes.
That message took Crothers back to his younger days before he found things in life that impassioned him. He remembered the days when he would have trouble walking down the steep stairs at school due to his condition, his classmates laughing at him as he tripped over himself and came crashing down to the ground. The days where he wondered why people had to be so cruel. All he wanted in life was to have friends, to be acknowledged, and he did all he could to find that fulfillment. It wasn’t enough.
Since those lonely days, Crothers has become an advocate for kids who believe they don’t have a voice in the world. Beyond the laundry list of accomplishments in the pool, Crothers has been a standout in esports, nearly reaching the peak of domestic competition in both Counter-Strike and VALORANT. Out of the competitive realm, he acts as an ambassador for the Cerebral Palsy League, a non-profit foundation that provides health services for people and families dealing with disabilities.
Years later, Crothers is still falling over and tumbling, even in post-race theatrics, but instead of laughter, there are cheers. He inspired a kid to find that spark that could change his entire life because he won a race on TV, just as he was inspired by the Paralympics so many years ago.
“Getting that message is my proudest accomplishment in my entire life,” Crothers said while quarantining in a hotel back home in Australia after the Games. “More than swimming, more than esports, more than anything in education. Just knowing I made a difference and changed the life of a young person with a disability.”
A struggle to stay afloat
Life started out as a struggle for Crothers. He was born 15 weeks premature in Gosford and flown to King George the Fifth Maternity Hospital, hours away in Sydney, in hopes of saving his life. His mother, Beth, could only lay and wait to be discharged from her own hospital bed to check on her newborn child.
Once released, Beth built a routine: Every night, she would board the evening train and take the lengthy trip down to Sydney to get to her son’s hospital before the doctors made their rounds. After gathering any info she could about his current condition, she would take the train back before doing it all again the same evening.
This all-day pattern continued for six weeks straight.
When Crothers finally came home, the challenges continued. Rob, Crothers’ father, pushed aside any possible career aspirations and bought a house close to his workplace, knowing that his son needed all-day observation and care. The parents worked in shifts, often waking up in the middle of the night to make sure Crothers was still breathing.
Crothers was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at nine months old due to intraventricular hemorrhage, leading to a weakness in his legs and impairment to his intellectual growth. At the age of four, doctors had advised that Crothers might not improve any further in terms of his mental development. His communication skills consisted of a string of single words and abbreviations.
Beth and Rob, ignoring the warnings that their son’s progress had stagnated, invested in conductive education. Every day, for upwards of 12 hours, the two, splitting time, would work with their son to overcome the obstacles set in front of him.
Crothers had issues discerning shapes, colors and numbers, leading to years of daily practice to communicate such things properly. Even eating a cup of yogurt, which is second nature to Crothers at this point, was something that he had to work through on his own as a child. His parents observed and let Crothers keep trying, but something as simple to many as using a spoon could take an entire day.
“He was willing to push himself to do it,” Beth said. “He wanted to do the things his sister was doing. He just wanted to go to the same school as his sister.”
Tireless work finally came to fruition. As he grew and began speaking in whole sentences, Crothers also found his second love aside from swimming: video games.
He and his sister, Heather, 364 days his elder, would battle in Mario Kart. It was a fun distraction for his sister, a colorful animated racing game to pass the time before finding something else to do. For Crothers, though, it was a field of play where he could see himself as an equal; he didn’t need to use his impaired legs or verbal skills to keep up.
At first, like everything up to that point in his life, winning felt impossible. But as the days went on, Crothers kept playing. He practiced night after night.
Finally, he won.
