Name: Hailey Danz
Country: USA
Sport: Para Triathlon
Previous Paralympics Experience: Rio 2016 (silver medal), Tokyo 2021 (silver)
Social Media: Instagram
Who is Hailey Danz
Danz is a two-time silver medalist at the Olympics and a world para triathlon champion.
Danz, 33, had her left leg amputated when she was 14 due to bone cancer. She played volleyball and basketball growing up, and took up downhill skiing after losing her leg. Despite having no background in swimming, biking or running, she took up the sport in college, with one reason being her inability to come to terms with being gay.
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“For a long time, I didn’t feel pride in being gay,” she wrote in an essay for Team USA in 2022. “On the contrary, the primary emotion I felt was shame.
“I’m not sure why I felt so much shame around my sexuality. I was raised by an accepting family in a fairly progressive community, but even still, growing up in a heteronormative world, I heard plenty of micro aggressions that sent the message that to be gay was to be less than.
“Maybe I internalized those micro aggressions a little too much. Or maybe I was too overwhelmed trying to process the amputation of my leg as a result of bone cancer, and I couldn’t confront the idea that there was yet another thing that made me different.
“I started to realize I was gay in college, around the same time I began competing in triathlon. In retrospect, I can see that I probably threw myself into the sport so intensely as a way of avoiding my feelings.”
Danz has thrived since proudly coming out, and now celebrates her relationship with her girlfriend, Hayley Bevan, posting on Instagram: “Sometimes I want to shout from the rooftops about how much I love her. But that’s a bit extra, so here’s a little photo dump instead.”
Related
USA’s Hailey Danz races to silver in wild Paralympic women’s triathlon
Danz’s surge on the bike yielded a comeback medal for Team LGBTQ and Team USA.
By Karleigh Webb | August 27, 2021
Hailey Danz at the 2024 Paris Paralympics
Danz will be a serious medal threat in Paris, hoping to parlay her two silvers into a gold. Her win at the World Triathlon Para Series Yokohama in May shows she is ready. She competes in the PTS2 class on Sept. 1.
