What I learned when I conquered the world's toughest triathlon | Minda Dentler

106,879 views ・ 2018-03-26

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It was October 13, 2012,
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a day that I will never forget.
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I was on my bike, pushing up what seemed like a never-ending barren hill.
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And it wasn't just any hill:
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it was a 15-mile climb up to a town called Hawi
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on the Big Island of Hawaii.
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And it wasn't just any ride:
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it was at the Ironman World Championship.
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I can still feel my muscles burning.
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I was struggling, tired and dehydrated,
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as I could feel the heat
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emanating from the asphalt, measuring almost 98 degrees.
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I was near the halfway point of the bike portion
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of one of the most prestigious, longest,
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single-day endurance race events in the world.
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Every year, during my childhood,
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I watched this very race on TV in our family living room.
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I sat next to my dad on our 1970s-style orange and brown sofa,
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and I remember being in utter awe
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at how these athletes pushed themselves to their limit
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in this grueling race.
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And just so you don't get the wrong idea,
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my family members weren't just spectators.
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They were incredibly athletic,
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and I always participated from the sidelines,
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cheering on my three siblings or handing out water at local races.
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I remember wanting so badly to be able to compete, but I couldn't.
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Even though I couldn't play sports,
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I decided to be active in my community.
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I volunteered at the local hospital in high school.
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In college, I interned at the White House,
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studied abroad in Spain
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and backpacked through Europe all by myself
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with my leg braces and crutches.
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Upon graduating, I moved to New York City for a job in management consulting,
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earned an MBA, got married
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and now have a daughter.
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(Applause)
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At age 28, I was introduced to the sport of hand-cycling,
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and then triathlon,
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and by luck, I met Jason Fowler, an Ironman World Champion,
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at a camp for athletes with disabilities.
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And like me, he competed in a wheelchair.
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And with his encouragement, at age 34,
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I decided to go after Kona.
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The Kona, or Hawaii Ironman
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is the oldest Iron-distance race in the sport,
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and if you're not familiar, it's like the Super Bowl of triathlon.
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And the Ironman, for a wheelchair athlete like me,
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consists of a 2.4-mile open-water swim in the Pacific Ocean,
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a 112-mile hand cycle ride in lava fields --
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now, that sounds exotic,
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but it's not as scenic as it sounds, and it's pretty desolate --
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and then you top it off with a marathon,
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or a 26.2-mile run in 90-degree heat
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using a racing wheelchair.
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That's right, it's a total distance of 140.6 miles using just your arms
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in less than 17 hours.
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No female wheelchair athlete had ever completed the race
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because of the strict, seemingly impossible cutoff times.
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And so there I was,
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putting it all out on the line.
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And when I finally reached the top of that 15-mile climb,
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I was discouraged.
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There was no way I was going to make that swim in my time limit
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of 10 and a half hours,
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because I was almost two hours off pace.
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I had to make the agonizing decision
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to quit.
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I removed my timing chip, and I handed it over to a race official.
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My day was done.
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My best friend Shannon and my husband Shawn
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were waiting at the top of Hawi to drive me back to town.
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And on my way back to town, I began to cry.
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I had failed.
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My dream of completing the Ironman World Championship
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was crushed.
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I was embarrassed.
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I felt like I'd messed up.
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I worried about what my friends, my family and people at work
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would think of me.
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What was I going to put on Facebook?
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(Laughter)
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How was I going to explain to everyone
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that things didn't go the way I had assumed or planned?
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A few weeks later I was talking to Shannon about the Kona "disaster,"
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and she said this to me:
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"Minda, big dreams and goals can only be realized when you're ready to fail."
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I knew I had to put that failure behind me in order to move forward,
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and it wouldn't be the first time that I had faced insurmountable odds.
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I was born in Bombay, India,
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and just before my first birthday, I contracted polio,
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which left me paralyzed from the hips down.
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Unable to care for me, my birth mother left me at an orphanage.
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Fortunately, I was adopted by an American family,
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and I moved to Spokane, Washington
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just shortly after my third birthday.
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Over the next few years, I underwent a series of surgeries
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on my hips, my legs and my back
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that allowed me to walk with leg braces and crutches.
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As a child, I struggled with my disability.
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I felt like I didn't fit in.
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People stared at me all the time,
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and I was embarrassed about wearing a back brace and leg braces,
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and I always hid my chicken legs under my pants.
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As a young girl, I thought thick, heavy braces on my legs
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did not look pretty or feminine.
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Among my generation, I am one of the very few individuals in the US
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who are living with paralysis by polio today.
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Many people who contract polio in developing countries
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do not have access to the same medical care, education,
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or opportunities like I have had in America.
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Many do not even live to reach adulthood.
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I have the humbling knowledge that, had I not been adopted,
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I most certainly wouldn't be in front of you today.
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I may not even be alive.
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All of us, in our own lives,
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may face seemingly insurmountable goals.
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I want to share with you what I learned
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when I tried again.
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One year after my first attempt,
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on a sunny Saturday morning,
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my husband Shawn
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dumped me into the ocean at the Kona Pier
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and, with 2,500 of my closest friends and competitors,
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we started swimming as that cannon went off promptly at 7am.
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I focused on one stroke at a time, staying in between bodies,
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counting my strokes --
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one, two, three, four --
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and lifting my head to sight every so often
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just so I wouldn't get too off track.
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And when I finally reached the shoreline,
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Shawn picked me up, and he carried me out of the water.
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I was so stunned and thrilled when Shawn had told me I had managed
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a one-hour-and-43-minute swim time.
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On to the bike segment.
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I had eight hours and 45 minutes to complete the 112-mile bike course.
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I broke up the course in seven- to 10-mile segments in my mind
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just to reduce the enormity of the race.
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The first 40 miles, they clipped by as we benefited from a little tail wind.
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By 4pm, I had made it to mile 94,
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and I did the math and I realized I was in serious time jeopardy
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because I had 18 miles to go and less than 90 minutes,
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and that included a few sizable hill climbs.
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I was stressed out, and I was scared
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that I wasn't going to make that time cutoff again.
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At this point, I pushed my internal voice aside that said,
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"This hurts. Quit."
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And I told myself, "Minda, you better focus.
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Focus on what you can control,
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and that is your attitude and your effort."
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I resolved to be OK being uncomfortable,
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and I told myself, "Push harder,
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forget about the pain,
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and keep that laser focus."
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For the next 90 minutes, I cranked as though my life depended on it.
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And when I rolled into town,
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I heard on the loudspeaker,
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"Minda Dentler is one of the last competitors to make the bike cutoff."
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I did it!
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(Applause)
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By only three minutes.
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(Laughter)
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It was 5:27pm,
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and I had been racing for 10-and-a-half hours.
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The first 10 miles of the run went pretty quickly,
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as I was so excited to finally pass people
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with my three wheels to their two feet.
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The sun quickly went down,
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and I found myself pulling up to the bottom of Palani hill,
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looking straight into a half-mile hill that looked like Mt. Everest
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at mile 124 of the race.
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My friends and family were ready at their stations
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to talk me up that hill.
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I was struggling, tired,
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desperately gripping those rims just so I wouldn't tip backwards.
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When I finally reached the top of that hill,
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I turned left onto a very lonely 15-mile stretch onto the Queen K Highway,
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totally exhausted.
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I pressed on, focusing on one push at a time.
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By 9:30pm,
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I made that final right-hand turn onto Ali'i Drive.
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I heard the crowd's roar, and I was overcome with emotion.
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I crossed that finish line.
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(Applause)
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(Applause ends)
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And my final time was 14 hours and 39 minutes.
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For the first time in the 35-year history,
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a female wheelchair athlete
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completed the Ironman World Championship.
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(Applause)
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(Applause ends)
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And it wasn't just any female athlete.
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It was me.
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(Laughter)
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A paralyzed orphan from India.
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Against all odds, I achieved my dream,
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and through this very personal commitment to myself,
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I slowly realized that completing the Ironman
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was about more than conquering Kona.
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It was about conquering polio
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and other disabling but preventable diseases,
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not only for myself,
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but for the millions of children
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who have been and still will be afflicted by vaccine-preventable diseases.
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Today, we are closer than ever to eliminating one of those diseases
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everywhere in the world.
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In the mid-1980s, polio once paralyzed more than 350,000 children a year
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in more than 125 countries.
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That amounted to a staggering 40 cases an hour.
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By contrast, so far this year,
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the last endemic countries have reported a total of only 12 cases.
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Since 1988, more than 2.5 billion children have been immunized against polio,
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and an estimated 16 million children,
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who otherwise would have been paralyzed like me,
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are walking.
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Despite this incredible progress,
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we know that until it's eradicated,
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polio remains a very real threat,
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especially to children in the poorest communities of the world.
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It can reemerge in some of the most remote and dangerous places,
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and from there, it can spread.
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And so this is my new Ironman:
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to end polio.
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And I am reminded every day,
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when I look at my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Maya.
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She is able to climb a ladder in the park,
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push her scooter or kick a ball across the grass.
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Almost everything that I see her do at her age
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reminds me of what I could not do at that age.
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And when she was two months old,
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I took her to get her first polio vaccine.
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And when the doctor came in the room to prepare the shot,
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I asked him if I could take a picture to document the moment.
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When we left the room,
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I could feel my eyes welling up with tears.
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I cried the entire way home.
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It was in that moment that I realized
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that my daughter's life would be very different from mine.
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She will never be faced with the crippling disability of polio,
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because a vaccine was available, and I chose to get her immunized.
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She can do anything she wants,
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as can each of you.
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(Laughter)
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Now I'd like to leave you all with one question:
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what is your Ironman?
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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