The Toughest Lap

Paraplegic Jason Pipoly Has His Swim Stroke -- and Goals -- Back

He rolls along in his battered wheelchair with the rusty bearings and the wobbly wheels, chattering loudly into his cell phone as he passes drugstores, steakhouses and outdoor cafes, maneuvering into the street to avoid curbs.

It takes him about 15 minutes to make the mile-and-a-half trip from his apartment at 16th and Belmont streets NW to the YMCA on Rhode Island Avenue. Inside, the smell of chlorine hangs in the air. Lifeguards circle the pool in their red T-shirts and trunks while swimmers stretch their muscles on blue mats in the musty artificial heat.

After tugging on his gray swimsuit, he rolls out to the pool, easing himself from the wheelchair onto the floor. A tattoo of a wave ripples on his biceps as he scoots into the water.

He starts out easy, wearing paddles on his hands to improve his stroke and a buoy that he designed tucked between his legs to keep them afloat. Swimming at a steady pace, he stretches his arms to pull deeper, his chin tucked into his chest for better momentum, squeezing maximum distance out of every stroke. When he reaches the wall, instead of doing a flip turn, he uses one hand to maneuver himself around and push off for the next lap.

The best swimmers are generally long and lanky. He is 5 feet 4, with short arms. But he has learned to make the most of what he's got.

He waits for that moment of Zen when he isn't fighting the heaviness of the water anymore, when his body rolls effortlessly, his arms stroke perfectly in sync and it feels like he was born in the water. He remembers when his trunk would twist, his legs would kick and the movement came naturally. But now he has only his arms to make it happen. Reaching Zen is harder now.

At age 6, Jason Pipoly was already pushing the edge, his father recalls, skiing black-diamond slopes in the Rocky Mountains near their home in Denver. At 11, he made his first attempt at swimming the English Channel, coming within four miles of the beaches of France, according to press accounts at the time. In college in California, he took up surfing and slept on the dunes of Ocean Beach. Tried road racing, too, he says, in Bandol, where the French Grand Prix was once held.

So it wasn't really strange that he woke up early one winter morning in Colorado, where he was living six years ago, and decided that he had to see the sun rise over a frozen reservoir in the Rockies. He started his maroon Saturn and pointed it toward the horizon. He headed down the winding road that follows the Fryingpan River, driving fast, just for the thrill of it.

He doesn't remember seeing the icy patch on the road. As he rounded a turn, the car started to slide sideways. Instead of turning into the skid, as he knew to do, his reflexes took over and forced him to turn the other way. As the tires left the road and the car started to flip down the embankment, Pipoly saw a tree coming in his direction. He remembers closing his eyes.

"When I opened my eyes I said, 'Oh, I'm fine, I made it through,' " he says now, jiggling a prescription bottle, his nails bitten down to nubs. The car landed on top of a tree in a ravine. Pipoly tried to move his legs but couldn't feel them. He tried to relax. He was rapidly losing blood. He was alone.

He wasn't sure how long he was there before the rescue team arrived. When they found him, his body temperature had dropped below 92 degrees. They cut him from his car and airlifted him to the hospital in Grand Junction. For 2 1/2 days, he was strapped to a steel table that was rolled from side to side to ensure that his blood didn't clot and that his lungs wouldn't collapse.

Once he pushed the call bell to ask the nurse to stop the table, if only for a minute. She stopped it, but left him lying on his left side screaming in pain. He didn't ring for help again. After surgery on the third day he learned he would be paralyzed from the chest down for life. He was 28 years old.

Dressed in a gray T-shirt, tan shorts and black-and-white high-top boxing shoes, Pipoly is alternately intent and bored as he sits at the back of the hotel conference room and listens to a manufacturer rep's presentation about orthotics and prosthetics.

Two hours into the program, his head nods, and then finally he is called to speak to the audience of physicians, therapists, nurses and case managers. He is there to give his testimony about the reciprocating gait orthosis, a device made by the company, Hanger, that brought him here today.