Catarina Guimaraes was born with cerebral palsy, a neurological disorder characterized by abnormal brain development, affecting a person’s ability to control their muscles, including the ability to move and maintain balance.
But Guimaraes did not let that stop her athletic dreams. The 20-year-old New Jersey native was a high school star athlete at Cranford High School, roughly 25 miles from Manhattan, where she competed on both the varsity soccer and track teams. Now Guimaraes, who is a second-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do, aims to leave her mark on Paris at the Paralympic Games, which began yesterday with the opening ceremony, is airing on the USA Network, and streaming on Peacock and NBC Olympics platforms.
The track and field events start tomorrow. Guimaraes will be looking to capture medals in the 100-meters, 400-meters and long jump. She is in the T38 category in the Paralympics, which is for ambulant athletes with cerebral palsy that have the mildest form of the impairment. As a sophomore in the 2022-23 season for High Point University in North Carolina, Guimaraes was the first-ever cerebral palsy athlete to compete at the Division I level. Representing the United States at the 2023 Pan American Games last November in Santiago, Chile, she won a silver medal in the women’s long jump and a bronze medal in the women’s 100-meters.
The broadness of her talent and determination as an athlete is inspiring as Guimaraes, a member of the first-ever U.S. CP soccer team, was the MVP of the 2022 Women’s World Cup held in Salou, Spain, leading her squad to the title. Guimaraes is not only an accomplished athlete. Her other impressive endeavors include being the author of the “Death Garden” fictional book series.
She has broken through barriers to become a model for other battling disabilities. Yet, Guimaraes has admitted there have been many difficult days. In a YouTube video for High Point, she described her physical challenges coping with CP.
“Things don’t always really like go through right, or they’re really delayed,” she said. “…I have
a slower ability to recover and slow and fast twitch. My motor control struggles a lot, but those sort of (are the) main things. I have a lot of fatigue. It takes three to five times the amount of energy for someone with cerebral palsy to complete like regular tasks (as it does) someone without cerebral palsy.”
When Guimaraes was a toddler, her parents, who are of Portuguese descent, noticed she was walking abnormally.
“I couldn’t go upstairs, I couldn’t go down the stairs,” she explained. “I couldn’t really walk for long periods of time.”
When she was four years old, Guimaraes and her parents went on a trip to Portugal to visit family members. While there, she was examined by a doctor and diagnosed with spastic diplegia, a form of cerebral palsy that causes muscle stiffness in the legs and in some cases the arms, but usually less severely in the latter. Spastic diplegia can appear in infancy or early childhood and permanently affects muscle control and coordination.
On her Facebook page, Guimaraes has a post that reads,”I have suffered from Cerebral Palsy all my life, but it never stopped me doing the things I love.” Her High Point biography notes part of her motivation for achievement.
I feel like I’m doing it for all the girls who didn’t see themselves making it this far. I’m showing them that they do have a place and they can do it, they just have to find the right people to help them because no one can do it alone.”
Love this article! So much of what you wrote is amazing and inspiring. Thank you!