Desmond Jackson’s Determination Paid Off With A Paralympic Return Eight Years In The Making

Desmond Jackson was only 16 when he represented Team USA at the Paralympic Games Rio 2016 as the youngest male athlete on the track and field team.

It was a feat that only existed as a distant dream a decade prior.

“I grew up in a single-parent household with my mother who was a very strong, independent woman,” Jackson, an amputee sprinter and jumper, said. “I would train as a kid on the weekends. I would skip birthday parties and many other events with friends to make the sacrifices I needed to be great.”

The answer “was never no” when Jackson’s mother, Deborah, asked him if he wanted to stop pursuing his track-and-field dreams.

Jackson, who had his left leg amputated at nine months old, went on to become the first amputee to ever compete in North Carolina high school athletics, and despite once being ditched by the team bus en route to a meet, he remained undeterred. He hitched an hour-long ride from a family friend to the meet, laced up his spikes and ran.

That same resilience is what led the Durham, North Carolina, native back to the Paralympic Games in Paris this summer after an eight-year hiatus. In July, the 25-year-old ran a then world-leading 12.14 seconds to win the 100-meter T62 at the U.S. Paralympic Team Trials before going on to finish seventh in the T63 event in Paris.

“Never give up. I know that’s cliche, but I could have easily given up,” said Jackson, who missed the Tokyo Games due to a 14-month sanction as the result of an anti-doping violation.

“To have made it back meant a lot to me, especially facing the adversity I did. Most athletes don’t come back from a USADA suspension. It’s been very uphill, but I have a lot of gratitude. I had to pinch myself a lot because it still didn’t feel real that I had made the team.”

At his first Paralympics in Rio, Jackson was a sprightly teenager, ecstatic with his top-10 finishes in the 200 and the long jump.

He left Paris in a different state of mind — happy to have been there yet hyper critical of his performance on the track.

“Paris was bittersweet for me as I didn’t walk away with a medal and didn’t reach my goal. The results weren’t what me and my team were expecting coming into Paris as No. 1 in my classification,” he said. “But I’m now a two-time Paralympian and not many people can say that.”

Jackson will use that as motivation as he looks ahead toward the 2028 Games in Los Angeles, where he hopes to participate in the 100, long jump and potentially a third event. He will not stop training, he claimed, until he becomes the world-record holder in the 100.

He has an extra jump in his step, too, for the next training cycle after witnessing how far the Paralympic Movement has come since he competed in Rio.

“It was shocking to see how much the Paralympics have grown and how much the people of France supported the Paralympic Games. I wasn’t expecting that,” he said.

Ezra Frech is the perfect personification of that growth. A decade ago, Frech wanted to break all of Jackson’s youth records. In Paris, Frech became an international star when he won the first of his two golds in the 100 T63 while competing against Jackson. 

Whoever is next in line, no matter the sport nor discipline, Jackson’s message to them is to always hold onto why you’re pursuing what you’re pursuing in the first place.

“For any kid, I would say do it because you love it,” Jackson said, “and when you run into roadblocks and challenges, hold on tight to that love for it.”

Stuart Lieberman has covered Paralympic sports for more than 10 years, including for the International Paralympic Committee at the London 2012, Sochi 2014, PyeongChang 2018 and Beijing 2022 Games. He is a freelance contributor to usparatf.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.