Olympic swimmer Amy Van Dyken was the most successful athlete at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. She won four of her six Olympic gold medals there. Van Dyken has won lots of awards since then – she even had her own Wheaties cereal box. After winning two more gold medals at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Van Dyken retired, got married to former NFL Denver Broncos punter Tom Rouen, and co-hosted a couple of radio talk shows.
In June 2014, she was “in a severe ATV accident and severed her spinal cord at the T11 vertebra.” The accident left her paralyzed from the waist down. After months of physical therapy, Van Dyken has taken her first steps. She is being interviewed by Robin Roberts for the ABC TV special, The Year: 2014, which airs Tuesday, December 23 at 9pm.
