new england is a little more gold rich today thanks to new hampshire native morgan stickney who's back with the gold medal she won two weeks ago for swimming in the 400 meter freestyle in her category at the paralympic games with a time of four minutes 42 seconds and 39 milliseconds even more impressive her road to victory after years of suffering due to a rare vascular disorder morgan had her lower left leg amputated in 2018 then after increasing pain in her right leg she had that leg amputated too in the fall of 2019 forcing her once more to relearn how to swim and walk all over again gold medal winning morgan stickney joins me now it's a pleasure to have you morgan and congratulations thank you so much what'd this second feel like when you touched the wall and knew you were the best the gold medal winner what did that second feel like i honestly didn't know that i won the 400 in that second and my reaction kind of just says it all when i looked at the clock so um i wasn't in the lead the entire race i was in second place and that last 50 i really just put my head down and said give it everything you got um because there's a medal on the line and so i really just did that and i looked up at the clock and i was shocked that i was able to touch first so even if you didn't know it in a second you know it two weeks later how does it feel today it's honestly still so surreal that um i was able to do that and then also being on the relay a few days later and being able to win another gold medal was just so amazing and by the way we would be showing people those moments but the olympics as you know very tightly guards its videos so i think people can imagine your success you know i've read a ton about you and christina quinn did a beautiful package about you a year or so ago and i know you to be a relentlessly positive person but how hard was all of this i don't mean the training i mean dealing with amputations and you were a star swimmer when you were able-bodied how hard was dealing with all this both physically and mentally yeah i mean it was really difficult but i'm really thankful and grateful for my family and my friends um just being there for me every step of the way and honestly like swimming is how i was able to cope with it all um even though like in the direct moment i wasn't able to get into the pool when i had like surgery but afterwards i was able to get back into the pool and so i think that just kind of kept me going you know even though you've had two amputations my understanding is you're not you're still not fully recovered right and you still have some medical issues ahead of you correct i do yes so my disease is progressive so um i'm constantly taking medications and seeing doctors to make sure that i don't lose my knees and despite all this my understanding is over a period of roughly a year you cut 30 seconds off your time in the 400 leading up to the olympics i mean how does that happen i honestly just trained really hard and everyone always asks me they're like how did you just win a gold medal with only a year's worth of training and um all the people that know me really well like know how much work that i put into this and i mean i trained three to four times a day every day and just um my diet was very strict my sleep regimen everything was just to get this gold medal and so it's such an honor to be able to come home with that so my understanding is your parents when you were mentioning all the people who supported you is it true your parents moved from new hampshire to north carolina totally pulled up stakes moved down there because they felt that was the best place for you to be training yeah my dad and i came down here and my mom is still up in new hampshire and so um i take time being between the two locations and um yeah north carolina is really great and they just the training system that they had down here and the coach and everything was just what i needed do you ever feel feel sorry for yourself for what you had to go through again as i said when you were a younger swimmer you were of what top 20 i mean you were a star rising do you feel sorry for yourself or do you just blow through all that not really um i always try to look at people who are worse off than i am and so i like to look at quadruple amputees and you know i think i'm i feel so grateful that i have my arms and um i think just things like that really make you grateful for what you do have and you don't look at what you're missing and what you don't have you know when you just said what you did i was about to say which i pulled back you really are an inspiration but then i remember reading that you don't like being told you're an inspiration either i mean you obviously are an inspiration what's your problem i mean why why are you hesitant to accept what is obviously true um i just feel like in certain circumstances like people will just come up to me and i'll be walking across the street and they'll know nothing about me they won't know that i'm a two-time gold medalist know nothing about my journey and they'll just be like oh you're an inspiration and i think by me walking across the street that's not really inspiring because that's just me doing like what i do every day but if someone comes up to me and they go oh my gosh i saw you in the newspaper i saw you on tv and i heard your story like that's so inspiring you know i really take that to heart because they are able to understand part of what i went through and they're human too and they're able to sympathize with that well you know i want you to know morgan i've never told a double gold medal medal winner they were wrong about something but you are wrong you are an inspiration to anybody who knows your story what is the moral do you think do you have time to step back from what you've lived through and what's the moral of your personal story for people from afar what is it do you think um honestly i feel like everyone gets dealt different cards in life and we aren't able to control those cards and i feel like when we're dealt the cards it's how you handle your situation and so for me this is how i was able to handle being a bilateral amputee and everyone faces different difficulties in life and it's really just about getting back up again and not letting them knock you down so what what's the next mountain morgan's thickness going to be climbing or swimming through or whatever the proper nomenclature is what's next yeah so we have worlds in june of um 2022 and then um paris in 2024. so i've already gotten back in the pool and started training again and are you still in school i should know this but i know you were were you a pre-med kid or something what's your what's your school deal yeah so i put school on hold when i was training for tokyo so i have five classes left until i graduate well i have to say your story is terrific we are really proud of you here in new england for tremendous accomplishments and it was a pleasure to meet you morgan congratulations and best of luck in the future thank you nice meeting you