Betsy Alison: The Hall of Fame sailor who won World Championships gold nine months after becoming para athlete
After an 18-month competition hiatus and just nine months post-op, Alison returned to the racecourse to add another sailing world title to her list of victories — this time, with a disability.
After 25 years coaching the United States’ most successful Paralympic sailing team of all time, it was an “ironic” turn of events for Hall-of-Fame racer Betsy Alison as she herself became a para athlete in the final months of 2022.
The five-time Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year dominated an array of different sailboat classes throughout her professional career, but it wasn’t until August 2023 that she found herself back on top of the World Championships — this time, with a disability.
In November of 2022, a team of surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital removed a cancerous tumor the size of a football from Alison’s hip, subsequently removing 90% of her glute muscles, part of her femur, half of her pelvis and reconfiguring much of her hip and upper leg muscles.
“I had no idea whether I was going to come out with a leg,” she told Olympics.com in an exclusive interview following her podium performance at Worlds.
Preparing to enter the operating room, she recalled the doctors saying, “Look, we’re going to save as much as we can, but we can’t tell you the extent of what’s going to happen”.
Nine months later, Alison was standing on top of the podium in the Netherlands at the 2023 Sailing World Championships with a gold medal around her neck.
Rebounding at 2023 Sailing World Championships
After re-learning to walk in the early months of 2023, the Sailing World Championships quickly came into view for the decorated sailor. Held in August at the Hague in the Netherlands, it would be the first time that para racing classes were held among the rest.
Her goals:
- Use the championships as a clear-cut date to finish weaning off prescription painkillers
- Successfully travel alone
After a three-day training trip to Sacramento, California, Alison had traveled across the country on her own and trained in the boat she would be racing for the first time in The Hague – both of which boosted her confidence and prepared her for her first race in more than 18 months.
Upon arrival in the Netherlands and just nine months post-op, she took the world by storm in a 10-day battle against Poland’s Olga Gornas-Grudzien, landing herself on top of the podium with the gold around her neck and a world title in a boat she had only just learned to sail.
Even after all of this, the success of arriving in the Netherlands still trumped the trophy.
“I felt like I had already won before I got into a boat,” she said.
“Honestly, that was a bonus on top of everything else; it just felt great to be back in a boat again.”
It was an “ironic” twist of fate for the 63-year-old as she sailed among her students and watched past teammates from the sidelines.
Coming off of the water, she told Sailing World in a filmed interview on Instagram, “I'm almost in tears now. Having the ability to represent your nation on this kind of stage is really important and doing so with a disability, it makes me really proud, and I just hope that whether it's young kids behind me – boys, girls, men, women – that we all learn that despite our challenges we can still rise to the top."
Early career and coaching success
Growing up with a father who insisted she sail, Alison reluctantly took to the sport during her younger years, spending days in the boat with friends on Barnegat Bay in New Jersey.
After her father's passing and encouragement from friends, she bought a Laser (a single-handed, one-design dinghy) in her freshman year at Tufts University and quickly decided she would race in nationals, having “no idea how to sail a boat”.
Surrounded by the leading sailing team in the country, she began by asking simple questions.
“How do you do this? What did you do? How do I make it go fast?”
Answers to these questions paired with practice, research and pure determination landed the amateur sailor on top of the podium at her very first national championships.
After making the jump to J-24s (a larger boat that requires three to five crew members) and winning her first five women’s Keel Boat Championships, the strategy was solidified; find the best and start asking questions.
“It’s been a winning formula for me, and it has served me well for 50 years, so why change it?” she said.
The trailblazing sailor went on to win numerous world and national titles, earning her ticket into the US National Sailing Hall of Fame in 2011 as the first woman ever inducted.
Widely regarded as one of the greatest honors in the world of sailing, Alison is also the only sailor to have ever been named the Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year five times. From her first in 1981 to her last in 1998, she won the award over a span of 17 years, demonstrating greatness across disciplines through generations of sailors.
“It’s not one award, it’s not one event. It’s the collective history of what I’ve been able to achieve.”
On top of her own sailing accomplishments, she is known for having coached the most successful Paralympic sailing team in the history of the United States, leading the nation to eight medals between 1998 and 2016.
“Once you get in, you can never get out because it’s so compelling and it’s so rewarding and it’s so intriguing to help elevate the skillsets and the abilities of people.”
If asking questions is still Alison’s secret to success, it only makes sense to see her land on top of the podium in her first race as a para athlete.
What's next for Betsy Alison?
“It’s been a long road for me and it’s still going,” Alison said, sitting at her desk and massaging her left hip while reflecting on her revolutionary career and, as ever, looking ahead to what’s next.
“It’s nice to have been a figure where you’re laying the groundwork for a lot of the women that are coming behind,” she said.
The 63-year-old trailblazer evaluated the possibilities of the sailing community to bring opportunities to people from marginalised communities all over the world.
Crediting Paralympic gold medallist Jens Kroker with founding Turning Point, an organisation helping people with physical, mental, or social handicaps become empowered through sailing, Alison says that this model could be replicated throughout the United States and beyond, and she plans to get a head start on making that happen.
“I think that would be a phenomenal way to cap my career.”