Paris (AFP) – Tracy Otto’s journey to becoming a Paralympic archer after being left for dead five years ago by an ex-boyfriend was like “making beauty out of ashes,” the American told AFP on Saturday. The 28-year-old and her boyfriend Ricky Riessle were attacked as they slept in their Florida home by the jealous former partner. He shot Otto several times, including through the left eye with a pellet gun, and stabbed her. “My spinal cord was severed or transected,” she said. Riessle was also shot several times and stabbed in the back, but he recovered and aids Otto when she performs. Their attacker left the house, sat down on the lawn, rang the police, and handed himself in. He later received a 40-year jail sentence.
“I try to think of it as making beauty out of ashes, you know, rising as a phoenix would,” Otto told AFP after winning her first-round match at the Paris Paralympics. “Showing the world that regardless of your circumstances, you really can do anything that you put your heart and mind to.” Otto said she will be forever grateful that Riessle has been there for her throughout the traumatic aftermath. She suffered a tough childhood, and when her family abandoned her during her rehabilitation, he came to pick her up from the nursing home in Chicago.
“Him coming to take me from the nursing home… yeah, that was a moment that I’ll never forget,” she said. “I remember so vividly him telling me that everything is going to be OK and we’re going to build the best life that we can together. And look at where we are now.” Otto, who releases the arrows through a device controlled by her mouth, says she is “so blessed” to have Riessle in her life.
“Honestly, at first, it was a struggle, you know, just coming off of a relationship with someone that tries to end your life, that you once loved,” she said. “Hindsight is 20/20, obviously. So looking back at it, it’s kind of cringey.”
– ‘Take over the world’ –
She says her bond with Riessle is on another plane compared to regular relationships. “We’re inseparable,” she said. “We’re literally together 24/7 because obviously, I need the care. But we just have this bond that is unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. It’s beyond family. It’s beyond a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship.”
“It’s really a union of the soul.” It showed in her matches on Saturday, whether sharing a joke or him advising her during the breaks between ends and telling her how proud he was of her when she lost in the quarter-final. She says that she still has “small bits of memory of things that happened (during the attack)” but she has undergone therapy and “taken my time to process the trauma.” However, the physical consequences go further than just her paralysis from the chest down.
“My body doesn’t function as it should anymore,” she said. “So my body doesn’t function in many ways. And thermoregulation, not being able to sweat or warm up my body temperature, is a big one that I face as a challenge when I shoot archery.” She says she turned her life around because she “wants to be a beacon of positivity.” She had always liked archery even before the attack.
“One day when we were going down the highway in March 2021, I was just like, well, I have so much new time on my hands, why don’t we try something new?” she said. “I was just like, let’s go for it. Let’s do this.” She says being positive is helped by her choosing her “own family, the ones that lift you up.”
“Having the mindset that you just have to keep moving forward,” she said. “Making goals for yourself and having people around you that love you, just surrounding yourself with positivity and spreading light. Being a role model for those women who have gone through things such as I have and those with disabilities.”
Otto has set herself big goals. “I just want to take over the world, continue on to L.A. 2028 and then Australia in 2032. I just want to take over the world!”
© 2024 AFP
