For Wheelchair Fencer Ellen Geddes, The Trick Is Never Hearing The Word ‘No’

Growing up, the last thing Ellen Geddes wanted to hear was “no.”

“I don’t believe in that word,” she said. “That’s not for me. Ellens don’t do ‘no.’”

For her first 23 years, that mentality made Geddes “horrifically stubborn.” In the 13 years since, people call her “tenacious.”

Nothing about her personality has changed, to be sure. But the way people described her flipped after a 2011 car crash resulted in a complete spinal cord injury that left her paralyzed from the waist down.

“It is the same behavior, just viewed differently by people,” she said, in her characteristically direct fashion.

Whether you want to call her tenacious or horrifically stubborn, Geddes proudly owns it, and she credits that mentality for why she’s been able to so thoroughly reinvent herself after the injury.

Before the crash, Geddes was a competitive equestrian whose knowledge of fencing was “being vaguely aware that it was a sport.” In the years that followed she became a wheelchair fencer and then a Paralympian in the sport. Now she goes into the Paris 2024 Parlympic Games with a realistic shot at making the podium.

“I think that my unwillingness to give up has really benefited me,” said Geddes, who turned 36 on the Fourth of July, “and that’s why I have gained success and been able to be successful in fencing — because there was a long time that I wasn’t very good at it.”

Growing up in South Carolina’s horse country, Geddes lived on a farm, where her life centered around her equines. Over the years she became an accomplished equestrian.

Fencing’s appeal, at least initially, was more practical.

The captain of the adaptive fencing team at Atlanta’s Shepherd Center first piqued Geddes’ interest with an offer to learn “how to stab people.” For a while, though, the best part of wheelchair fencing for Geddes was simply that she could do it.

“When I first started I didn’t really like the detail and minutiae of it. Like, I didn’t really care,” she said. “I enjoyed being able to, like, do a sport.”

As she began to appreciate the nuances of the sport, though, Geddes began seeing fencing as a puzzle. Like the classic battle of the wits scene from “The Princess Bride,” in which Westley takes two glasses of wine, discreetly poisons one, and then challenges Vizzini to pick which is safe to drink, Geddes thrives on the cunning strategy and split-second decision-making that comes with each move.

“(It’s) a little bit like solving the other person, right?” she said, with a wry smile. “So it’s a bit like tricking people.”

Within a year of her injury, Geddes entered her first competition as a wheelchair fencer. By 2013 she debuted at the world championships, and in 2014 she earned her first medal on the world cup circuit. She’s gone on to compete in four more world championships, as well as the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games in 2021, while competing in both the epee and foil divisions.

As the success mounted, Geddes leaned more and more into the sport, and she now lives what she calls a “bicoastal lifestyle,” spending half her time training in Vancouver, Washington, and the other half back in South Carolina breeding horses.

Horses remain her true passion. When in South Carolina, she lives on her parents’ farm and works with the animals as a facility manager, instructor, breeder and trainer. Someday, she hopes, one of the warmbloods she’s training along with childhood friend Helen Hill can compete in the Olympics in the equestrian eventing competition.

“It’s very rewarding to watch an animal that you saw take its first breath go jump its first jump,” she said.

The priority now, though, is preparing for Paris.

Geddes took part in her fifth world championships last year, where her ninth-place finish in the women’s foil event matched her career best. She said her “high hopes, stretch goal” for Paris is reaching the podium, something she feels like is realistic based on results from the current quad. Short of that, she wants to at least finish top eight in foil.

This is a different life than Geddes ever imagined, and now as one of the more experienced U.S. fencers, she’s taking on more leadership both within the team and the sport at large. As the lone U.S. woman competing internationally in her class, Geddes is eager to help grow the admittedly very small pool of athletes in the sport through demonstrations or other outreach.

Wheelchair fencing, she said, has a low barrier of entry, meaning someone newly injured or newly in a chair can do all the basic movements from Day 1.

“And they get to stab their friend, or they stab the coach or whoever is there doing the like demo or their first class or whatever,” she said.

When it comes to her own fencing, though, Geddes remains proudly, defiantly stubborn.

As Geddes spoke to reporters at the Team USA Media Summit this spring in New York, a friend listening from nearby couldn’t help but chuckle as the Paralympian told a story about getting thrown off horses as a girl, then continuously dusting herself off and hopping back on.

“It’s horse or hospital,” Geddes said. “You don’t want to go to the hospital. Get back on the horse.”

That friend, Leah Nester, saw the same stubbornness a decade later when Geddes broke her leg the day before a flight, and initially refused to seek help lest that complicate her travel plans. It wasn’t until Geddes went into shock that she finally agreed to go to the hospital.

“She was like, ‘Just put a cast on it. We’re getting on a flight tomorrow,’” Nester recalled.

Geddes didn’t make that flight. Applying that same obstinacy to her fencing, though, she did secure one to Paris.