Minnesota Triathlete Paralyzed After Car Enters Closed Race Course During Florida Competition
A Minnesota triathlete was left paralyzed after a driver entered a closed race course during the BillBone Olympic Triathlon in West Palm Beach, Florida. Her family says she is already showing early signs of progress.
Image Credit: WCCO CBS Minnesota / YouTube. Ashleigh Whitton went to West Palm Beach, Florida, last weekend to do something she loved: compete in a triathlon. She came home in an airlift.
The Eden Prairie, Minnesota, woman is now paralyzed from the neck down after a driver crossed into a lane that had been closed for the BillBone Olympic Triathlon on Sunday, sending her life spinning in a direction nobody saw coming. Whitton had only taken up triathlons recently, but she had already thrown herself into the sport with the same all-in energy that defines everything she does. Friends and family describe a woman who does not do anything halfway.
She teaches a fitness class at a Life Time gym in Eden Prairie that is, by all accounts, intense and joyful at the same time, and she had been setting her sights on something even bigger: completing a full IRONMAN triathlon this summer. That dream is now on hold, but the people closest to Whitton are not giving up on her. According to Palm Beach County Sheriff's Deputies, a 74-year-old driver attempted to enter a nearby park by cutting across a lane that had been shut down to traffic for the race.
The move created what officials described as an "unavoidable" situation. Whitton and another cyclist collided with the passenger side of the vehicle, and the impact was severe enough that Whitton was airlifted to a hospital. Her daughter, Sophia Yoerks, dropped everything and rushed to be by her mother's side.
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