Grace Norman wins gold at Paratriathlon World Championships

Grace Norman is a world champion.

The recent Xenia Christian High School graduate from Jamestown who will attend Cedarville University in the fall won the PT4 class competition at the 2016 ITU Paratriathlon World Championships in Rotterdam, Netherlands on Sunday.

The 18-year-old Norman, who competes with a prosthetic left leg due to a birth defect, won her gold medal by topping 10 other competitors from six different nations. She won the cycling and running segments of the competition, was second in the swimming and beat second-place finisher Gwaladys Lemoussu of France by 4 minutes, 29 seconds. Anna Bychkova of Russia was third.

Norman was a silver medalist at the 2015 world championships in Chicago.

On Sept. 11, she will represent the United States in the first-ever paratriathon at the Rio Paralympic Games in Brazil. She is the youngest of the eight Americans on the team. With several disability classes condensed into just three different ones for the Games, Norman — the U.S. national champion in the PT4 class — will face a bigger field but still has a good chance to make the medal podium.

She will also run the 200 meters in the Paralympic track and field competition.

VIDEO: Norman talks about preparing for Paralympic Games

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