Paris 2024 Paralympics | They will give us chills: Birgit Skarstein

Summer like winter, she's on deck. At just 35, Birgit Skarstein will be competing for her 6th Paralympic Games in Paris. When it comes to sport, she doesn't do things halfway through: the Norwegian is on the cross-country ski slopes when the snow permits, and on the water when the thaw comes.

She has been to the Winter Games in Sochi 2014, Pyeongchang 2018 - where she was flag bearer for the Norwegian team - and Beijing 2022. Paris 2024 will be her third appearance in the Summer Games, after Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020. Her record of achievements includes a Paralympic gold medal in Tokyo in the women's single scull rowing event, following a 4th place finish in Rio.

Still in single sculls, she has won 4 gold medals at the World Championships, and 2 more at the European Championships.

How do you lift a leg?

It was at the age of twenty that her life was turned upside down: following an operation she underwent under epidural anesthetic, she lost the use of both her legs. ‘I had been walking for 20 years, and that day, the day the surgeon asked me to lift my right leg and then my left leg, and I couldn't, neither for the right nor for the left, that day I realised that I didn't know how to lift a leg. And the doctors told me they didn't know if I'd ever be able to walk again.’

In the days that followed, Birgit made a list of all the things she loved in life, what she had and what she could do, even from her hospital bed. The list is long - with a lot of family and friends - and Birgit decides she's got loads to do and not enough time to complain. Although she eventually realised that she would never walk again.

She threw herself into cross-country skiing and rowing, and as if that wasn't enough, she also made her mark on the Norwegian version of ‘Dancing with the Stars’ in 2020. She gives talks, smiles at life and shares her happiness.