Swimmer Becca Meyers is skipping Tokyo Paralympics because of covid rules

Dave Sheinin, The Washington Post, July 19, 2021
This deaf-blind Paralympian was told to navigate Tokyo alone. So she quit Team USA. “This has been very difficult for me,” Becca Meyers said of giving up on the Tokyo Paralympics. But “I need to say something to effect change, because this can’t go on any longer.” On Sunday evening, roughly five weeks before the start of the Tokyo Paralympics, Meyers, a deaf-blind swimmer with a chance to medal in four events, pulled the plug on her Olympic dream — most likely forever. With a click, she sent an email informing U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee officials of her decision to withdraw from Team USA. The decision was rooted in both self-preservation and a larger sense of duty and purpose. Born with Usher syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that left her deaf from birth and that progressively has robbed her of her sight, she requires a personal care assistant (PCA) to function as an athlete and as a member of society. Since 2017, in the aftermath of Rio, Meyers has had an understanding with the USOPC that permits her mother, Maria, to travel with her to international competitions as her PCA. The results have been spectacular. In 2018, she won five gold medals at the Pan Pacific Para Swimming Championships in Cairns, Australia, and in 2019, she won four medals and set two world records, the eighth and ninth of her career, at the World Para Swimming Championships in London. For the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, however, Meyers’s needs have collided with the drastic restrictions resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. Competitions are being held almost entirely without spectators, and significant limitations on foreign delegations mean personal care assistants, including Maria Meyers, will not be permitted into Japan for the Paralympic Games. For Becca Meyers, that meant she wasn’t going to Japan, either.