“If you told me this a few years ago, I wouldn’t even think I’d be alive so just being here and being able to have this experience and this — unbelievable,” Anastasia Pagonis said
“If you told me this a few years ago, I wouldn’t even think I’d be alive so just being here and being able to have this experience and this — unbelievable,” Pagonis said after her victory. “I love being able to bond with my teammates and have this experience with all of them.”
“I decided that, let me start TikTok, let me start Instagram, and show people that this is blindness, and show people how the visually impaired and blind are and show people how I do things,” she said. “How I do my hair, how I do my makeup, how I dress nice.”
It wasn’t always this way for Pagonis.
She wasn’t always blind, for starters.
In fact, Pagonis was fully sighted until her vision started to go around age 11. She was originally diagnosed with Stargardt macular degeneration but was later diagnosed with a genetic condition and autoimmune retinopathy, which means her immune system attacks her retinas. By 14, her vision had almost completely deteriorated and taken Pagonis into the dark with it both mentally and emotionally.
Then they found Islanders Aquatics and coach Marc Danin, who said yes. He’d never coached a blind swimmer before, but he put on blackout goggles and learned how so he could teach her. The family began driving an hour and a half each way, twice a day, for practice.
Pagonis started as an S13 but is now an S11, which is the classification for athletes with the greatest amount of vision loss. This past April at a World Series meet in Lewisville, Texas, Pagonis won a handful of medals and set a few national records.
While the results were great, Stacey said, that still wasn’t the most important thing about Pagonis being in the pool.
“It was more a thing that makes her happy and a thing that brought her joy every day rather than the medals,” she said. “And she still feels that way.”
People and Team USA.
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