Paralympic Athlete Ezra Frech on Being a Role Model, Training During COVID, and What it Means to Be Elite

There are two things you need to know about Ezra Frech. First, at 16, he is a world class athlete, set to represent Team USA in the high jump, long jump, and 100-meter dash at the Paralympic Games in Tokyo. Paralympic athletes are the elite of the elite, and Frech is one of the youngest to ever represent the United States at the Paralympic Games. The second thing you need to know: He’s funny.

On his TikTok, Frech jokes about how he lost his left leg in a “horrific bee accident” (fact check: he was born with congenital limb differences resulting in amputation) and uses his prosthetic for some truly inspired physical comedy. On the anatomy of a good one-legged man joke, he told me: “It has to be natural.”

Frech didn’t always feel so comfortable about his body. Arriving at a point of pride was a journey. “When I was younger, I didn’t really joke about [my disability]… I was pretty down on myself. I was in a school where I was the only kid with a disability. I sort of had a ‘why me’ mentality,” he said. As he got older, though, the way Frech viewed himself changed. “I realized I was born this way,” he said, “I might as well just make the most out of my life and have a good time.” He sees humor as a way to diffuse awkward situations, as well as to express his comfort with himself: “I make jokes to break up the tension. Talking about disability is still a little bit taboo.”

Sports have always been central to Frech’s life. Instead of “mama” or “papa,” his first word was “ball.” He was fitted with his first athletic prosthetic, more colloquially known as a “blade,” at age 4. If a sport was in season, Frech played it. “Soccer season, basketball season, track season, I was sort of all over the place,” he said. He played in mainstream sports with his classmates, and still does — in addition to being an internationally ranked para-athlete, Frech is on his high school’s track team. Meeting other disabled athletes, elite athletes who looked like him, was a formative experience. “The elite guys would come and they would hang out, give advice, talk to the younger kids,” he said. There wasn’t a specific meet that stands out to Frech – just being part of a disabled athletic community was important.

When Frech saw those same athletes competing in the 2016 Paralympic Games, though, everything crystallized. “I saw lots of guys I had competed with and competed against, guys I looked up to, competing in the Paralympics. It was this moment when the universe told me, ‘this is what you’re meant to do.’ I was so fired up,” he said. He remembers excitedly telling his parents that he was going to compete in the next Paralympic Games. He was 11 years old at the time. “Everyone was like, OK, good luck making the team. But now I actually have made the team,” he said, smiling. Frech loves that he has become like the men who inspired him, and looks forward to inspiring young disabled athletes himself: “I’m coming to these track meets and talking to little kids. Five years ago, I was that little kid.”

In fact, Frech is competing alongside some of the men he’s looked up to for his entire life. When he was six months old, his parents took him to a triathlon, where they met Rudy Garcia-Tolson. Garcia-Tolson was 16, and had just qualified for his first Paralympic Games as a swimmer. “It was huge for my parents to meet another person who had a similar disability [to mine]… They saw this teenager who just had his stuff figured out. He was cool. He was walking on two prosthetic legs. He was the nicest guy… He helped show my parents that it was possible for me to be active and live a happy, normal life.” Tokyo will be Garcia-Tolson’s fifth Paralympic Games, and Frech is excited to be on the same team as the man who showed his parents what was possible. “It’s a full circle moment,” Frech said.

Frech looks up to many of the athletes on Team USA, but was especially delighted to be on the track and field team alongside Sam Grewe, who he describes as a mentor and inspiration. This will be Grewe’s second time on Team USA – He was a silver medalist in 2016. “Funny story,” Frech said, “when I was 11 years old, he said I was going to make the team with him in 2020. And I was like, ‘really’!? And he said, ‘you’ll make it, I promise you.” Frech remembers a moment where he and Grewe were competing in the leadup to the Tokyo Paralympic Games. “We looked at each other, and we’re like, ‘we did it!’ We did what you told me I could do at 11 years old.”

Paralympic events are split by type and degree of disability, in an effort to promote fair competition. For example, an athlete in a racing chair can move faster than any runner could. Daniel Romanchuk holds the world record for fastest wheelchair marathon – he finished in one hour thirteen minutes, and fifty-seven seconds. Runners using their own two legs have never managed to dip below two hours. Frech competes in the amputee classification, where high performance carbon fiber blades could, some argue, give an edge over athletes who rely 100% on their own flesh and blood.

For more casual athletes who use prosthetics, there isn’t as much thought to the quality of the blade. “When I was younger, it was a blade they threw on me to have a good time. There wasn’t super focus on having it be the most optimized for track and field,” Frech explained, “with the Paralympics, especially the amputee classification, it matters who is in the best shape, who is the strongest and fastest. But there’s also the question of how you can interweave the training and body with the technology, to use both to the fullest potential.” Part of his Paralympic training has involved making little adjustments and perfecting technique and balance that are unique to him. “How can we make this leg help me become the fastest, the highest and farthest jumper within the boundaries of the Paralympics? It’s so cool,” he grinned. It is important to note that Frech trains both with and without his prosthetic – He has videos on his Instagram doing one-legged box jumps 54 inches into the air.

Training during the pandemic was, unsurprisingly, difficult. “Los Angeles was very locked down,” Frech said. He and his coach, LaTi Avery, would train anywhere he could. They got creative. “We didn’t have a track… We were in parks, we were on the street, we were at the beach every day of the week,” he said. That was the way things went for the first eight months, until school reopened enough that he could use the track and weight room. Vaccination has also expanded his options. Frech runs at the track every week, lifts weights three or four times a week, and even does exercises at home. “[Training] is really like a full time job. I’m glad it’s summer and I don’t have to balance it with school like I was before,” he said.

Outside his own training and school, Frech is proud of the nonprofit he started with his family, Angel City Sports. The organization provides free sports competitions, clinics to find the best adaptive equipment or type of sport for an individual, and more to people with physical disabilities in Southern California, including children and veterans. Frech is grateful for his family and his friends, but is aware that not every disabled person has what he has.

“A lot of people with physical disabilities feel like outsiders,” he explained, “through [Angel City Sports] me and my family are able to bring people together and provide community through sport… My favorite thing outside training is hanging out with kids [at Angel City Sports] and hanging out with kids and [newly disabled] adults. You see grown men and women inspired by the little kid who’s three years old, running around on his prosthetic. And the kids are inspired by older people, not just elite Paralympic athletes, but older people who have made a great life for themselves,” he said.

At the end of the interview, I told him that I hope my fiancé and I can be those adults for other people – we’re both visually impaired and my fiancé is a dedicated marathon runner. In response, Frech invited us to come out to Los Angeles some time to experience the facilities at Angel City Sports ourselves. “Have you ever played goalball?” he asked enthusiastically. Goalball is a sport designed specifically for blind and low vision athletes. Frech has played it with a blindfold. “We had a goalball clinic last week. You should come out for sure.”

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Credits:

Photographer: Emily Malan

Groomer: Paige Davenport

Art Director: Emily Zirimis

Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue