{"id":633892,"date":"2026-04-27T10:52:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T10:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/633892\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T10:52:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T10:52:18","slug":"paralympic-swimmer-alexa-leary-calls-for-traumatic-brain-injury-awareness-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/633892\/","title":{"rendered":"Paralympic swimmer Alexa Leary calls for traumatic brain injury awareness day"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s the date that is seared into Paralympic champion Alexa Leary’s brain.<\/p>\n

July 17, 2021: the day her “second life” began, following the traumatic brain injury (TBI) she sustained in a cycling accident at age 19.<\/p>\n

It’s the date 24-year-old Leary now wants recognised as traumatic brain injury awareness day, to help fuel understanding of the unique challenges associated with the sudden changes a TBI brings.<\/p>\n

March is brain injury awareness month, but there is currently no specific day dedicated to TBI.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Australia, 1 in 45 people live with an acquired brain injury, which is damage to the brain that occurs after birth.<\/p>\n

Although Leary remembers none of it, her cycling accident, which happened while she was training as a triathlete, wiped four to five years of her memory.<\/p>\n

It forced her parents to try and fill in the gaps of a life Leary no longer felt she had access to.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Leary poses with the Sunshine Coast doctors who helped save her life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“People just think, ‘oh she fell off her bike’, that’s it,” Leary told ABC Sport Daily<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“But it’s like, no, I am living a full second life. I have severe traumatic brain injury.<\/p>\n

“It has changed my whole life \u2026 it’s really hard living with a TBI.”<\/p>\n

As documented in her new book, Sink or Swim, Leary was initially unable to walk or talk.<\/p>\n

But the hardest part about rehabilitation was accepting the fact that the old ‘Lex’ was gone.<\/p>\n

“I always thought, ‘I want my old life back’, but when I think about it, no, I don’t, I love who I am now,” Leary said.<\/p>\n

“Well, I am learning to accept and understand her, it’s just, life is really hard. Honestly, it is difficult.”<\/p>\n

‘My emotions go insane’: Leary<\/p>\n

Leary’s difficulties include issues with emotional regulation, which may come as a surprise to an Australian public used to seeing her sing and dance her way around the pool deck.<\/p>\n

\"Alexa<\/p>\n

Leary is often seen beaming on pool deck, but has revealed she has dark days. (Supplied: Swimming Australia\/Delly Carr)<\/p>\n

“My emotions go insane,” Leary said.<\/p>\n

“I get sad, happy, angry, depressed in a day, in a second.”<\/p>\n

The world record holder employs a behavioural coach to help manage her emotional volatility, while she says she can struggle with continuity from one day to the next.<\/p>\n

“Honestly, [some days] when I wake up, I don’t even know who I am,” Leary said.<\/p>\n

To cope, Leary writes notes to herself the night before, to detail what she has to do the following day.<\/p>\n

It allows her to get “on board” with the day’s agenda.<\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n

“It’s to try and tame my emotions, to not make them so heightened,” she said.<\/p>\n

Leary acknowledges these challenges make her achievements at Paris all the more remarkable, where she won two gold and a silver medal to go along with a World Record in the women’s 100m freestyle (S9).<\/p>\n

“It’s incredible, and I’m so proud of myself for how far I’ve actually come,” she said.<\/p>\n

\"Alexa<\/p>\n

Leary won two gold medals in her Paralympic debut at the Paris 2024 Games. (Reuters: Andrew Couldridge)<\/p>\n

Because Leary also experiences processing delays, she says it took a while for her victory to sink in.<\/p>\n

“When I got out [of the pool], everyone was like, you’ve won, and I just couldn’t believe it,” she said.<\/p>\n

Leary determined to raise awareness of TBI<\/p>\n

Leary credits her determination in the pool to the attitude that saw her regain her ability to walk and talk.<\/p>\n

Her parents were told that because the left side of her brain was badly damaged, she would struggle with activities involving the right side of her body.<\/p>\n

\"Alexa<\/p>\n

Leary was initially encouraged to swim as a form of rehabilitation.\u00a0 (Getty Images: Adam Pretty)<\/p>\n

As a result, her specialists encouraged her to take up swimming, to ensure she was working the right side of her body. But she was determined not to stop there.<\/p>\n

“I wanted more than just rehab,” Leary said.<\/p>\n

“I’d had a massive accident, so I wanted to go out there and do something good for myself. That was my biggest goal, and look at where it has got me.<\/p>\n

“I’m a very determined and passionate person. When I want something, I want to fight for it \u2026 even when I fought to walk and talk again, I’ve just had that mindset.”<\/p>\n

That single-minded focus is now on getting a day for TBI, with Leary saying she chose to open up about her challenges to support others.<\/p>\n

\"Alexa<\/p>\n

Leary is a former triathlete, and holds two Paralympic swimming world records. (Supplied: Swimming Australia\/Delly Carr)<\/p>\n

She has met a number of other people who live with TBI, who say her journey has inspired them.<\/p>\n

“I will fight for [an awareness-raising day] because I feel like we need to be recognised and known because we all struggle with TBI and it’s really hard,” she said.<\/p>\n

Music, not swimming, Leary’s biggest love<\/p>\n

That quality of determination has also driven Leary’s over-achieving mentality, not just writing a new book, but releasing several songs.<\/p>\n

After her TBI damaged much of her brain, she says, her love of music became ‘heightened’.<\/p>\n

Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n

And while she was initially unable to talk, she “knew every word to every song”.<\/p>\n

“Music is the biggest part of my life,” Leary said.<\/p>\n

“I just love it more than anything.”<\/p>\n

In fact, music is deeply entwined with Leary’s sporting successes, and it was Kylie Minogue’s “can’t get you out of my head” that became the soundtrack to her triumph in Paris.<\/p>\n

“I literally had a little stage and I had to get up and sing, ‘la la la’,” she laughed.<\/p>\n

“I was fully enjoying it and I didn’t even care about the medal. I was like, this is going off.”<\/p>\n

But while Leary has aspirations to meet Minogue, she says she is currently “locked down” into training for the Los Angeles Paralympics and, just maybe, a home Paralympics in Brisbane.<\/p>\n

Do you have a story idea about women in sport?<\/p>\n

Email us abcsport5050@your.abc.net.au<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s the date that is seared into Paralympic champion Alexa Leary’s brain. July 17, 2021: the day her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[307043,64,63,15992,85,113020,74355],"class_list":["post-633892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-alexa-leary","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-paralympics","tag-sports","tag-tbi","tag-traumatic-brain-injury"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}