Illinois athlete aims for gold in Paris Paralympic Games

CHICAGO - The Paralympic Games kick off this week in Paris with nine athletes from the University of Illinois representing the United States.

Susannah Scaroni blew her previous marathon record out of the water when she won the Boston Marathon in wheelchair racing. This week she’s going for the gold in Paris. 

"There's a long history of wheelchair sports here including the invention of wheelchair basketball," Susannah said as she spoke to us from Urbana-Champaign.  

UIUC is the national training center for wheelchair racing.   

Susannah moved to Illinois after she was injured and paralyzed in a car accident when she was five years old.   

"Fortunately for me, I learned about adaptive sports when I was ten and that led me to Illinois. So I started with wheelchair basketball and was happy to do whatever I could, so when I learned about wheelchair racing I started doing that," she said.  

Paris will be Scaroni’s fourth Paralympic journey. She won a gold and a bronze medal in Tokyo, in addition to winning the Chicago, New York and Boston marathons.   

This year's Summer Paralympic Games run from Aug. 28 through Sept. 8.