Swimmer Christie Raleigh Crossley won 4 medals at Paralympics

Christie Raleigh Crossley has defended her participation in the 2024 Paris Paralympics after accusations of cheating.

The 37-year-old Team USA swimmer, who is nonbinary, has won two golds and two silver medals at her first Paralympic Games, setting record times in some events.

Raleigh Crossley came in second in the women’s 50m freestyle final in the S10 classification — for swimmers with minimal physical impairments, such as a missing foot, a missing leg below the knee, or problems with their hips.

In the heats, she set a world-record time, which was then bested by gold-medal winner Yi Chen of China in the final.

Get off the sidelines and into the game

Raleigh Crossley’s other three individual events have been in 100m races in the S9 classification – freestyle, backstroke and butterfly. S9 swimmers generally have joint restrictions in one leg or double below-the-knee amputations.

She won backstroke gold on Tuesday, in a Paralympic record time; silver in freestyle on Wednesday; and butterfly gold on Friday, setting another Paralympic record.

Inspired by watching the Tokyo Paralympics on TV, Raleigh Crossley has been competing in para-swimming since March 2022.

Her disability is not as visible as that of most other swimmers in her class – she had a blood tumor removed from her brain in 2019 and has a neurological impairment.

In her teenage years, Christie Raleigh was a state champion in her native New Jersey before moving to Florida where she achieved more success, including NCAA All-American honors.

She dreamed of competing at the Beijing Olympics, but in 2007 a drunk driver hit the car she was riding in and she sustained injuries to her neck and back.

Another road accident the following year — this time a hit-and-run in which she was a pedestrian — caused a brain injury.

A move to Baltimore saw her return to training in the pool but her comeback attempt stalled when she got married and started a family in 2010.

The relationship was allegedly abusive and ended in divorce. She later married again. She is currently a single mother of three.

Raleigh Crossley celebrates with her daughter after winning the silver in the women’s 50m freestyle final. | OIS/Louise Raymond via Imagn Images

Accusations of cheating have dogged Raleigh Crossley over the course of the last two-and-a-half years, and they resurfaced early on in these Paralympics.

“To be told online by all of these bullies that I am not somehow disabled as I appear, just because I can swim faster than them, it’s pretty devastating,” she told the Washington Post after the 50m freestyle S10 final.

“I went from enjoying a world record to being utterly devastated that the entire world seemed to think I was a cheater and that I was somehow faking my hole in my brain and the cyst in my spinal cord.”

A New York Times feature that was published before the Games explained it: “The Trials of a Paralympian Whose Disability Doesn’t Always Show.”

In that interview, Raleigh Crossley also talked about her struggles with her gender identity, which began in high school when she was “relentlessly bullied” by fellow students who questioned if she was really a girl.

“You are telling me I’m a man, and I’m sitting here not feeling like a woman,” she told the New York Times.

“And so how do I sit there and defend myself against a comment that I can’t say, ‘I am a woman’? I don’t feel confident in saying that. I’ve always felt very outside of my body, outside of the gender norms.”

Shortly before being the subject of a profile on the Team USA website last summer, she spoke about being nonbinary in a video posted to social media.

“I remember how happy I was when I had the conversation with a [Team USA] staff member and they told me that it wasn’t a problem at all to mix and match between women’s and men’s issued clothes,” she said at the time.

As the Paralympic Games have progressed, criticism of Raleigh Crossley has increased, particularly on social media. There have even been negative online comments from fellow competitors, including a U.S. teammate.

As a result, Raleigh Crossley has distanced herself from U.S. Paralympics Swimming in Paris.

With four medals, she has won the most of any Team LGBTQ athlete competing at these Games. Her haul is cloaked in controversy but she remains defiant.

“I think especially now through all of this, I’m finding my voice; I’m using my voice,” she added to the Post. “I am very secure in who I am.”