I lost my leg in a shark attack. This is how I fought back.
Ali Truwit is stronger than you think – and her next challenge proves it.
Ali Truwit has always been a planner. Type A, organised, someone who likes to know where she’s going. “Growing up in a swimsuit” she swam competitively for Yale and just ten days before her graduation in 2023, she ran a marathon with her mum, Jody Truwit. By 22, she had a five-year plan lined up: two years in consulting, followed by business school, and then a move into the healthcare sector.
But just two days after graduation, things took a devastating turn.
On a celebratory trip to Turks and Caicos, Ali and her best friend, Sophie - captain of the Yale swim team - set out for a day of snorkelling.
“We were in the water, and seemingly out of nowhere, a shark appeared and started attacking us, ramming us and bumping us from underneath with a lot of aggression,” she recalls.
Despite trying to fight back, the shark got hold of Ali’s leg. “Before I knew it, it had bitten my foot off and part of my leg.”
“I was bleeding out. We screamed for help, but no help came. So Sophie and I made the split second decision to swim for our lives to the boat, which was roughly 75 yards away in the open ocean. And the shark was chasing us.”
After being helped back on to the boat, Sophie - who had just graduated from medical school - asked the captain for a tourniquet and tied it around Ali’s leg.
“I think about that moment alot…” Ali says. “She too had just been attacked by a shark and was staring at her best friend bleeding, and she leaps into action. Sophie was a hero. She saved my life.”
After being taken back to shore and transferred to A&E, Ali spent “several long, painful hours in a hospital in Turks and Caicos” before being airlifted to a trauma hospital in Miami for life saving surgery, and a few days later, to New York City for a third surgery.
On her 23rd birthday, doctors amputated Ali’s left leg. She describes this time as being “devastating and so painful and hard… like my entire world had been flipped upside down. I was filled with fear, doubt and worry. It was really easy to feel like I wanted to give up. But at the same time, I looked at that same situation and said, ‘It’s a miracle I’m here. It’s a gift. I have a second chance at life’.”
“What happened to me stinks and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy but within this massively unlucky thing, there were a lot of lucky things,” Ali adds.
Recovery was brutal but Ali was determined to walk again. “I wanted to feel strong again. I wanted to get back to who I was and what I loved,” she says.
That meant facing immediate challenges: getting out of bed and learning to walk with a prosthetic. And she was overwhelmed with questions for her future. Would she ever be an athlete again? What would the rest of her life look like?
“My five-year plan was gone. I knew that pretty quickly,” Ali says.
The toughest hurdle was returning to the water. Ali’s safe space had become a place of fear. “It would just bring back flashbacks of the attack,” she explains. But she refused to let the shark take that from her too. “There are things in my story I’ve lost and I’m never getting them back, and there are things I can reclaim. I started with the water.”
Ali began cautiously with a flotation belt in her backyard pool.
The Paralympics had never been part of her plan, but the idea was planted thanks to a phone call from Noelle Lambert, a US Paralympic track athlete and fellow amputee. Noelle called Ali to “offer any support she could and she said, ‘Consider it’.”
At the time Ali thought the suggestion was “crazy”. But “feeling happy in the water again, the idea kind of started to marinate and it was an exciting thought to say, ‘what if I could pull that off?’”
So she decided to delay her post-grad job and throw everything at training to make the Paralympics.
Within a year of losing her leg, Ali made the US Paralympic Team. In Paris 2024, she won silver medals in both the 400-meter freestyle and the 100-meter backstroke.
“I had to swim roughly the same times that I had swum to get recruited ‘Division one’ with two legs,” Ali explains of her achievements. “I had always respected and admired Paralympians' strength and resilience. But I don't think I understood quite how fast they are.”
Speaking candidly about this time, Ali says, “I feel so grateful for the Paralympic movement because it reminded me of all I still had, all I could still do.”
Ali’s ambitions quickly grew beyond the pursuit of medals. The Paralympics had given her back a sense of strength, but she saw an even bigger purpose for her second chance at life. Shocked by the astronomical costs of prosthetic limbs - which can range from $10,000 to over $100,000 - she launched Stronger Than You Think, a charity dedicated to water safety, expanding Paralympic sport, and providing prosthetics for young women and girls.
“The motivator became: can I show the world what people with disabilities are capable of? Can I increase education, awareness, and fundraise for more young women and girls who need prosthetics?” Ali explains.
Her next challenge? The New York City Marathon - this time on a running blade.
“Ten days before the shark attack, my mum Jody and I had run a marathon together. Now, to run New York this November alongside friends and family, feels full circle.”
Her goal: to raise $100,000 through the race. Training has been punishing - uneven roads, swelling, blisters - but Ali draws strength from her cause, saying, “When it’s mile 20 and it’s painful and hurting for me, I think of all the young girls and women I want to help.”
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Now aged 25, Ali admits she could never have imagined this journey. “Two years ago, if you had told me I was going to run 18 miles through New York City on a prosthetic blade, I would have never believed you. Every run is a win. Every mile is something I never thought I could do,” she says proudly.
Despite everything she has been through, Ali’s disposition is cheerful and she has the kind of presence that makes people feel stronger just by talking to her. Her outlook on success is just as generous: “Success has always been, and continues to be, about how I can impact the people around me positively.”
It’s hard to argue Ali hasn’t already.