How this Long Island blind swimmer defies the odds to win gold and inspire others
Anastasia Pagonis went from swimming in her local Nassau County pool to swimming at the Paralympics.
In 2020, she made it to the Tokyo Paralympic games and set a new world record, earning a gold medal as well as a bronze medal – and she did it all blind.
The 22-year-old Nassau County native was always into sports as a child. But when she slowly started losing her vision around 12 years old due to two diseases, she had to shift from contact sports to swimming.
“I’m swimming as fast as I can into a concrete wall,” says Pagonis about the experience at the Paralympic games.
Pagonis started using her platform on social media to share her story, as well as her everyday life living with her disability, and the curiosity that people had helped her grow a following of over 332,000 on Instagram and over 2 million on TikTok.
Her accounts serve to not only educate, but share her interests in fashion and beauty, her adorable guide dog, Cheerio, and her most popular videos which poke fun at the most common misconceptions about blindness with some dark humor, receiving millions of views.
“I never saw anyone like me with a disability doing the things that I enjoy doing: being active, going to the mall, going to Sephora, doing my makeup,” she said. “I wanted to be that inspiration to people.”
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