Sold Out Crowds and Memorable Medals: Trischa Zorn Remembers the 2000 Paralympic Games

At the Paralympic Games Sydney 2000, Trischa Zorn-Hudson remembers walking out onto Sydney International Aquatic Centre’s pool deck and seeing a packed house. It was her sixth Paralympic Games, and she was impressed with both the venue and the crowd size.

“To swim in front of a sold-out crowd for a Paralympic event was pretty special,” she says.

For Zorn-Hudson — who was already the most decorated Paralympic athlete with 49 Paralympic medals, including 41 gold — the Sydney Games came near the end of her long swimming career. But they left a mark, both for her and the Paralympians who have followed in her wake.

Trischa Zorn-Hudson grew up in Tustin, California — south of Los Angeles — and started swimming at age seven. Blind from birth, she never let her disability slow her down. She was so fast in the pool that when the lauded Mission Viejo program was looking for another swimmer to round out its 9- 10-year-old relay squad, the coaches reached out to her mother. Would Trischa consider joining their program? She did, and training alongside future Olympians like Shirley Babashoff, she became an even more competitive swimmer.

“I missed [making the 1980 Olympic Team] by 0.01 of a second in the 200 back,” she recalls. “At age 16, that’s pretty crushing.”

But Zorn-Hudson would have another chance at international competition. The local newspaper in Orange County had run a story about her, and Dr. Charles Buell, then president of the California Association of Blind Athletes, reached out to her. He explained what the Paralympic Games were and asked if she wanted an opportunity to compete in the 1980 Games.

Zorn-Hudson had only competed against able-bodied swimmers, and her mother did not want her to compete as a disabled athlete.

“She’s like, ‘You don’t want to use it as crutch,’” she remembers her mother saying.

But Zorn-Hudson persisted. She was curious about competing against athletes with similar disabilities. In late June 1980, she traveled to the Netherlands with no expectations.

“I wasn’t really thinking of medals at the time,” she says — just swimming best times.

At the Paralympic Games Arnhem 1980, Zorn-Hudson won every race she entered, coming home with seven Paralympic gold medals. Four years later at the Paralympic Games New York City 1984, she defended her five gold medals in the 100-meter backstroke, butterfly and freestyle, along with the 200 and 400 individual medleys, plus a gold in the medley relay.

But her best was yet to come. At the Paralympic Games Seoul 1988, Zorn-Hudson expanded her program to include 50-meter events, plus breaststroke and longer freestyle races. In turn, she doubled her medal count, winning 12 golds.

Then at the subsequent two Paralympic Games, she won more medals than any other athlete: another 12 in Barcelona at the 1992 Games (including 10 gold) and eight at the 1996 Atlanta Games. Already the most decorated Paralympic medalist in history, she was chosen as U.S. flagbearer for the Closing Ceremony in Atlanta.

Between 1992 and 2000, Zorn-Hudson balanced training with a full-time job teaching in the Indianapolis public schools. The year before the Sydney 2000, she stopped teaching and moved to Colorado Springs to train full time with the first Paralympic national swim team and live at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Training Center.

“I knew that my training was the best that I had had up until that point of my career,” Zorn-Hudson says. “I knew that I was fully prepared [for the 2000 Paralympic Games]. I put more pressure on myself than the expectations of others.”

In Sydney, competing in a new classification system, Zorn-Hudson won five silver medals — in the 100 backstroke, butterfly, and breaststroke, 200 IM, and 50 breaststroke. She was never in it for the medals, though.

“Yes, medals represent your hard work,” she says. “But they don’t define you and who you are as a person.”

Still, she has one medal that is her favorite. After taking time off after the Sydney Games to heal an injured shoulder and start law school at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, she decided to return for one final Paralympic Games. But in May 2004, her mom passed away.

“She had always been to all my Paralympic Games, so not having her there, there was some question, ‘Do I really want to go?’” remembers Zorn-Hudson. But at age 40, she knew this was her last chance.

At the Paralympic Games Athens 2004, Zorn-Hudson won a bronze medal in one of her favorite events, the 100 backstroke. Of her 41 golds, nine silvers, and five bronzes, it’s the one that means the most.

“Being able to know that everything that we had gone through for that year before Athens,” she says, “there was some closure.”

Zorn-Hudson earned her J.D. in 2005 and now works in the fiduciary division withint the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, overseeing veterans’ and beneficiaries’ estates to ensure that funds are not misused or misappropriated.

Zorn-Hudson participated in the Paralympic Games for almost a quarter century, and she is proud of the impact she made and the progress she witnessed.

“Every Games, it seemed like there was a difference,” she says.

In her first two Paralympic Games, the events were held in different cities than the Olympic Games of the same years (1980 and 1984). The Seoul Games were the first time the Games were held in the same city and at the same venues as the Olympic Games.

“Then in 1992, that was the first time that we were able to actually hear our national anthem when we were on the podium and had won, so that was pretty special,” says Zorn-Hudson. Previous to 1992, a Games anthem was played.

In 1996, Zorn-Hudson competed in a home Games and “can totally understand people who are gearing up and training for the LA 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.”

“You can’t beat that,” she says.

The 2000 Games ushered in a more professional era of Paralympic sport. Prior to the Sydney Games, Zorn-Hudson had the opportunity to train full-time with the first-ever Paralympic national team. And for the first time at the Sydney Games, Paralympians — like their Olympic counterparts — received bonuses for winning medals.

“I want to believe that I made a positive impact on the sport and on the Paralympic Games,” she told TeamUSA.com in 2020. “I think about it sometimes and wish we were at that point back then. But now I know that the goal of the Paralympic athletes of that generation was to pave the way for the athletes now who have those opportunities.”