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A former Marine with one impressive athletic resume, Angela Madsen was a Paralympic rower who passed on what she loved to others. Also in the Guinness World Records six times for her rowing prowess and a record holder in her other favorite adapted sport – shot-put – she was a natural fighter (and a former Marine).
Uncannily, rowing and shot-put weren’t sports she played pre-injury (basketball was her favorite sport), but these sports transformed her life post-injury, helping her move on and see that a fulfilled life was still possible. Read on to learn the story of one of the SCI community’s biggest supporters.
Why She Was Fearless
Growing up in Fairbanks, Ohio, Angela dreamed of warmer weather, moving to Long Beach, California after high school. Pre-injury, she became a mother and joined the Marines (she was assigned to police duty). While a Marine, Angela joined the Marine’s Women’s Basketball Team, a passion that allowed her to travel the world, but it also unfortunately is the cause of her injury.
Tripped during a game in 1993, two discs in Angela’s lower back slipped, causing her massive back pain. The blow of paralysis however didn’t occur however until she underwent surgery to repair discs. Surgeons accidentally removed the wrong disc, paralyzing Angela at L2.
Finding herself a paraplegic suddenly in her 30’s, her entire life began to crumble. She was depressed, her husband (she had married) left her, the military didn’t want to pay her medical bills and to top it off, she lost her house. Finding herself homeless and even using storage at Disneyland to keep her things, Angela’s life was headed in the wrong direction….until she went to the National Veterans Games.
It was here where she discovered wheelchair-basketball, which is one of the first adapted sports she tried. This helped, but she still felt depressed about her paralysis. It wasn’t until she fell on some subway tracks in San Francisco a couple of years later (thinking she broke her neck) until she began to appreciate what she still had instead of constantly mourning when she lost.
This is the attitude that got her to try adaptive rowing, a sport that has etched her into the Guinness Book of World Records for multiple ocean crossings. In 2007, she made her first entry into the Guinness Book of World Records when she became the first woman with a disability to cross the Atlantic Ocean by rowing. She was also the first woman ever (disability or not) to cross the Indian Ocean a few years later. She went around the entirety of Great Britain as well. Long before all of this in 2000, she founded CARP (the California Adaptive Rowing Programs), which is still active today.
At the age of 47 in 2008, Angela next went to the Paralympics for rowing. While she didn’t win a medal, she missed the bronze by just a second. Angela finally won a Paralympic medal at the 2012 London Paralympic Games in shot-put actually and not rowing, throwing the put so far that she beat all previous Paralympic records.
What Happened Next?
In May 2014, Angela left her hometown of Long Beach, California and rowed to Honolulu, Hawaii, taking 66 days. She brought along an able-bodied friend as well. As she aged, she became a highly coveted adapted rowing coach in addition to running two foundations, Row of Life, and CARP, which helped Californians with disabilities experience adaptive rowing. She also published her memoirs, Rowing Against the Wind.
Sadly, in 2020 while attempting to row solo from California to Hawaii she had issues with her boat, and after days of no communication, she was found unresponsive in the water beside her boat. She was 60. We want to thank Angela for giving to the adapted athletics community in such a passionate way. The SCI community was permanently strengthened because of what she did when she was on this planet. Angela Madsen will never be forgotten.
UPDATE: Documentaries have been made on her incredible story since her passing. Check her IG below to learn more.
ideas@spinalpedia.com
