TOKYO, Japan —
Another Hoosier has won gold at the Paralympics.
Sam Grewe, a Middlebury resident who graduated from the University of Notre Dame, won the high jump T63 event in Tokyo. His winning jump of 1.88 meters was just shy of his own world record in the event.
Our partners at the Goshen News were with Grewe's family as they watched the drama unfold, twice coming down to Sam's final attempt before he finally clinched the gold.
"I knew I had it in me. I've jumped that height so many times," he told NBC after the event. "I visualized it and...you know, I wish I remembered it more clearly. I kind of blacked out for that moment."
Grewe played lacrosse, basketball and football in Middlebury. He lost his leg after being diagnosed in 2011 with a rare and aggressive form of bone cancer when he was 13 years old.
He's now 23 and the gold medal atones for a silver he won five years ago in the Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro.
After the Games, he's returning to his studies at the University of Michigan. Grewe says he decided to go to medical school so he could become a physician with a disability, something he never saw as a patient.
