Susannah Scaroni Is A Wheelchair Racing Medal Favorite At 2023 World Para Athletics Championships

With 20 Paralympic medals, 15 world titles, and over 20 major marathon wins, Tatyana McFadden is a household name in wheelchair racing.

But it’s McFadden’s U.S. Paralympic teammate Susannah Scaroni whom we should keep an eye on this year and next. After wins in the 5000-meters at the Paralympic Games Tokyo 2020 and the 2023 Boston Marathon, Scaroni is on her way to etching her name alongside McFadden’s.

Next up? The 2023 World Para Athletics Championships in Paris where the 32-year-old stands a good chance of earning her first world title in at least one of four distance races on the track.

For Scaroni, it’s been a long steady roll to the top of the world in wheelchair racing. When she was five years old, she was in a car accident that severed her spinal cord at the T12 vertebrae (lower thoracic spine) and left her with no sensation or movement from her hips down.

While a patient at Shriners Children’s Hospital in Spokane — about an hour north of her hometown of Tekoa, Washington — Scaroni learned about para sports when she was in the fourth grade. A local wheelchair basketball team was looking for players, so she joined.

“I loved it so much,” she said by phone from her home in Urbana, Illinois. “So that next spring, when they said that Para track was starting, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, can I please go to that too?’”

Scaroni was not sure what wheelchair racing entailed, but she had made friends on the basketball team and loved the coaches. Using loaner racing wheelchairs that were spread among all the kids on the track team, Scaroni soon loved track racing as much as basketball and wanted to pursue both in college.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has a long history with adaptive programs (dating back to 1948 when it became the first post-secondary institution in the U.S. to enable students with disabilities to attend) and has an acclaimed adaptive varsity athletics program. McFadden was then a student-athlete at UIUC, and Scaroni wanted to attend, but her mom could not afford out-of-state tuition. So instead, Scaroni matriculated at Carroll College, a Catholic liberal arts college in Montana. Carroll did not have a wheelchair basketball or track team. So Scaroni trained and raced on her own.

During her sophomore year at Carroll, Scaroni received a call from Adam Bleakney — head coach of UIUC’s wheelchair track and road racing team, and a 2004 Paralympic silver medalist in the 800. Bleakney told her that the UIUC program had received an outside funding source that, along with an athletic scholarship, would cover Scaroni’s tuition. Would she consider transferring?

In the fall of 2011, Scaroni made the move to Illinois and “thrived in the sport when I got here,” she said. McFadden — by then a Paralympic medalist and major marathon winner — invited her to dinner her first night on campus and let Scaroni know that she was welcome to hang out any time.

“She really made me feel welcome,” said Scaroni.

Within a year, Scaroni qualified to compete in the marathon at the 2012 Paralympic Games.

“I was absolutely not expecting to make the team,” she admitted. “I don’t think anyone was expecting me to make the team because I hadn’t done that well on the track at our [Paralympic] trials.”

But competing at Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota, that June, Scaroni finished second behind 2008 Paralympic marathon silver medalist Amanda McGrory. Even better, Scaroni’s time of 1:50:06 was fast enough to qualify for her first Paralympic Games.

The London Paralympic Games did not go as Scaroni had hoped. One of the final competitions of those Games, the marathon was held on an unseasonably hot day in London. She did not drink enough and wilted in the heat. But she was motivated by her family cheering (it was her mom’s first trip overseas) and the fact that she was competing for her country at the Paralympic Games. She crossed the finish line in eighth place.

Scaroni returned to UIUC and graduated in 2014 with a degree in food science and human nutrition. Eager to qualify for the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio, Scaroni decided to put her goal of becoming a registered dietician on the backburner while she focused on training and racing.

For the Rio Games, Scaroni qualified in the 800-meters, and she also competed in the marathon. Although she did not move beyond the heats of the 800 and came in seventh in the marathon, she learned from the experience: the key to making the podium in long races would be developing a good sprint.

The following year, Scaroni enrolled in a UIUC master’s program in nutrition science and exercise physiology. Over the next six years, she balanced training with school — finishing a full-time year-long dietitian internship in November 2022, earning her master’s degree in December, and passing her registered dietician exam in March 2023.

During that time, Scaroni was equally successful on the road, racing marathons all over the world — London, Tokyo, Boston, New York, Chicago — and finishing on the podium in most of them. But it was the lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic that helped her achieve the top step on the podium. Scaroni loves to train but not so much the travel side of racing. With no races and no travel for two years, she used the time to work on sprinting, as well as tweaking her equipment and zeroing in on an ideal seating position.

At the 2020 Paralympic Games — postponed a year because of the pandemic — Scaroni became a Paralympic champion, winning the 5000 (with McFadden in third).

“That was one of my best races,” Scaroni said. “And it was also a shocker.”

A shocker because it was her first race in two years, so she did not know where she stacked up against her competition. With seven-and-a-half laps to go, Scaroni rode off the front of the group. She thought she was simply taking her turn at the front of the pack, but when she looked back, she had a gap. She crossed the finish line with an almost-eight-second lead.

Later in the 2020 Games, Scaroni earned a bronze medal in the 800 and finished sixth in the marathon.

Then after the Tokyo Games, Scaroni was hit by a car while training. She injured her back and broke her racing chair. The injury healed, and she inherited a racing chair from a teammate who was retiring. But perhaps more importantly, she came away from the experience with a new mindset and motivation.

“I was happy to be on the start line,” she said. “I do always feel grateful I’m on the start line, but I don’t love traveling, so I think I was just more appreciative of getting to be at races last year.”

In 2022, Scaroni won just about every race she entered, including the Chicago 13.1 (half marathon), New York Mini 10k, B.A.A. 10k in Boston, Grandma’s Marathon, the Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta, and the Chicago and New York City Marathons. She finished the London Marathon and Oita International Wheelchair Marathon in Japan in second place, and the Berlin Marathon in third.

Then Scaroni rolled into 2023 with her first win in the Boston Marathon. Even after having to stop twice on the course to tighten a loose wheel, she beat the course record holder (Australia’s Madison de Rosario) by five minutes.

“I have a mixed track record in the rain,” Scaroni said of her Boston win (on a cool, rainy day in April). “You never know what’s going to happen in the rain. I’m just so thankful that I had a good day.”

As for comparisons to McFadden, Scaroni demurs.

“No one will ever erase what Tatyana has done,” she said. “A win today does not discount a win last year or a win eight years ago. … I’m proud that I’ve gotten to learn from her and train with her and know her on a personal level.”

Scaroni is now gearing up for the 2023 Para world championships, where she plans to enter the 400-, 800-, 1500-, and 5000-meter races. In 2019, she competed in these same distances, winning bronze medals in the 800 and 5000.

“You never know,” Scaroni replied when asked about her medal chances in Paris. “I feel like I’m always a wildcard. But I will be trying in all of them.”

“I don’t think there’s a chance I’ll medal in the 400,” she added, “but I will be trying!”