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McKenzie Coan shows off the gold medal she won Sunday in the 400 meter freestyle event of the 2020 Paralympic Games in Tokyo.
By Tom Law
The Toccoa Record
McKenzie Coan, the Paralympics swimmer from Clarkesville with the big fan following in Toccoa, won another swimming gold medal on Sunday in Tokyo.
McKenzie, the daughter of Dr. Marc Coan and Teresa Coan, won the 400 meter freestyle in commanding fashion and defended her first place win from the 2016 Paralympics held in Rio de Janiero.
Although a resident of Clarkesville, McKenzie has a sizable Toccoa following since her father practices medicine at the Northeast Georgia Physician’s Group Toccoa Clinic.
She still has a chance to win more medals in the 2020 Tokyo Games. She was scheduled to swim in the 100-meter freestyle on Tuesday, the 50-meter freestyle on Wednesday and the 50-meter butterfly on Friday.
“To be able to come back here and defend it, it’s been a really long five years,” Coan said after the gold medal performance. “There’s been a lot of hard things these five years. To be able to come here, especially after the last year, what the world has gone through, it’s just nice to come here and do something that makes you smile and makes you happy, so I think it means even more.”
Coan is a three-time Paralympian who holds five medals and is swimming hard for more. She won a total of four medals in the Brazil games – three golds and one silver.
In order to train for the delayed by a year 2020 Paralympics, Coan swam tethered in an 8-foot, mail order pool inside her parents garage during the period of pandemic shutdowns in 2020 and 2021.
When she was just 19 days old, Coan was diagnosed with osteogenesis imperfect (brittle bone disease), a genetic disease that makes it very easy for bones to break.
Because of her condition, she has broken an estimated 100 bones to date, according to published reports.
Doctors had told her parents she would never be able to do physical things – if she lived through her childhood.
Now 25, Coan has proven all of them wrong by competing in three Paralympics and winning five medals. She has also attended Loyola (Maryland) University and written a book, Breaking Free.