Everytime we see Victoria Arlen, she brings the biggest smile to our faces.
The former paralympic swimmer and her pro partner Val Chmerkovskiy wowed with a super fun cha cha, that even had all three judges grinning from ear to ear on Dancing With the Stars.
During the show, Victoria opened up about why she chose to wear the color pink for her big debut.
“This is the color of my first wheelchair, my crutches, my leg braces. Everything throughout this journey has been this neon pink and now it’s my dancing costume.”
The power of pink, you guys!
Victoria also explained on air that she really, can not feel anything in her legs.
“It’s literally like kind of dancing blindfolded and having no idea where my lower half is. So it’s really trusting Val.”
“She has such an incredible story and I can’t wait to continue to write her story and contribute to an incredible life already,” Val told E! News recently.
“Hopefully she’ll make lifelong memories on the show and I’ll help her learn how to dance.”
Victoria‘s situation is unique, in that she can’t actually feel her legs following only learning how to walk fairly recently after being in a coma for four years.
“It’s definitely challenging,” she says. “It’s a little easier to learn to walk than ballroom dancing.”
Val adds that he’ll be pushing himself this season: “I have to be a better teacher, a smarter choreographer, her and I have to really have to work together so I could get an idea of how to translate my methods into this unique situation. She can’t feel her legs or her feet and dance has a little bit of both those things.”
The 22-year-old Paralympian and ESPN commentator’s story is truly inspiring, and will give you that push to never ever give up, because that’s exactly what Victoria didn’t do.
She was diagnosed with two rare conditions known as transverse myelitis and acute disseminated encephalomyelitis at only 11-years-old. Victoria quickly lost the ability to speak, eat, walk and move and eventually put her in a four-year long coma without use of her legs for nearly 10 years.
It was her brothers who Victoria has to credit with getting her back into the pool — they literally threw her in!
“As I began to heal from my illness, I came to the sad realization that I would never swim again,” Victoriaremembers. I didn’t think I could swim without my legs. But my brothers disagreed, so in 2010 they threw me into our pool. I was terrified.”
She adds, “But it was a turning point in my life. It was the “jump” I needed to get back to my life. When I was swimming, I was free from the chair.”
Want to learn more about Victoria? Check out our 5 Fast Facts below!
Victoria put her all into physical therapy so she could walk again: “I trained seven days a week�three, four, five hour days of just training”
While she was going through treatments and in a coma, she ended up missing five years of school. But she was like, no biggie: “I doubled up my courses so I could catch up to them [my brothers].”
She was bullied when she returned to school: “I remember coming home from high school one day crushed because kids were bullying me because of my chair. I had been so happy to return to school and after that day, I didn’t want to go back.”
At 17, Victoria was on the USA Paralympic swim team and competed at the London Games. At the end of them, she ended up bringing three silver medals and a gold in the 100-meter freestyle, and also set a world record in the 100-meter free.
Just after those games though, she was disqualified from the Paralympic Swimming World Championships in Montreal after the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) ruled that her condition was not permanent�even though her legs were still completely paralyzed at the time.
Stay tuned for info on the upcoming season of Dancing With The Stars!
“Val is beyond excited about his partner this season,” a source told ET. “He’s completely re-energized and is feeling really optimistic about this season.”
He added on his Instagram, “I’m kinda super like holy shhh excited about this and y’all should be too.”
