At the Paralympics, Allison Lang will compete for Canada in sitting volleyball, a sport for athletes with lower limb impairments. She was born without part of her left leg, due to a condition called fibular hemimelia.Supplied
Allison Lang was bullied as she grew up because she was born missing half of her lower left leg. At three months old she underwent an amputation below the knee.
In junior high classmates called her a peg leg, stole her prosthesis and knocked her down when she used crutches.
“At one point I told my parents I didn’t want to live any more,” the Canadian Paralympian says.
She is 30 now and a member of the women’s sitting volleyball team.
Canada entered the competition as the world’s No. 1-ranked squad. It lost to Brazil in Tokyo in 2021 in the bronze-medal contest.
Sitting volleyball has been a part of the Paralympics since 1980 for men and for women since 2004. The Canadian women qualified in 2016 for the first time and finished seventh among eight nations in Rio de Janeiro. They improved to fourth at the pandemic-delayed Games in Tokyo and hope to reach the podium for the first time this summer.
Canada’s men’s team failed to qualify.
Women's sitting volleyball has been a Paralympic sport for 20 years now, and Lang and her teammates enter as the No. 1 squad in the world.Jody Bailey/Supplied
Lang was born in Edmonton and lives in Montreal. As a youth she wore pants instead of shorts in 30-degree temperatures to conceal her left leg. She never attended swim parties and declined invitations to sleepovers. “Hiding my leg consumed me,” she says. “It prevented me from life experiences. I was in complete denial that I had a disability. I have so much catching up to do.”
The genetic defect with which she is afflicted is called fibular hemimelia and occurs in just one in 40,000 births globally. It requires treatment for as long as a child is growing.
Lang had revision surgery every few years until she was 12 because the bone in her lower left leg continued to grow. It repeatedly broke through her skin. “I still have flashbacks to the pain,” she says. “There were times when I wondered what I had done to deserve this life.”
When the women’s team was announced on July 22, Lang posted a photo and an exuberant message on social media: “I’m going to the Paralympics!” It will be her first.
“The moment our roster came out I got emotional,” she says. “I didn’t want to assume I made the team. I had a good feeling about it but nothing was set in stone.
“There were tears. At that moment, a piece of my younger self healed. I am still working through the trauma. It is something I will carry for a long time.”
Lang tried other adaptive sports – soccer, swimming and snowboarding – but struggled. She was introduced to sitting volleyball through the War Amps and invited to a Team Canada training camp at 16 when the program was in its early stages.
“It was the most crucial experience of my life,” she says. “I met women who were just like me that were high achievers. They had careers and families. It sounds cheesy but it saved me. I was at the peak of my body insecurity and they helped me appreciate my body.”
When not playing volleyball, she has become an advocate for amputees and body positivity. As a model Lang has posed for Anthropologie, Reitmans, Joe Fresh and Via Rail. “I try to be open and vulnerable with other people,” she says. “I am grateful I get to use my voice to encourage the younger generation. As much as we feel limits are placed on us there is really no limit to what we can do.”
Lang trained with the women’s sitting volleyball team for five years before she took time off to pursue degrees at the University of Alberta and MacEwan University, both in Edmonton.
She put her life on hold and lived in isolation during the pandemic but on Jan. 1, 2021, she got a call from Nicole Ban, the Canadian women’s sitting volleyball coach.
“Are you ready to come out of retirement yet?” Ban asked.
“That was the conversation that restarted it all,” Lang says. “I figured if I wasn’t going to do it now, when would I do it?”
Sitting volleyball is contested between athletes with lower limb impairments. It takes place on a slightly smaller court than those used at the Olympics and also has a lower net. Each team fields six players at one time.
The Canadians are carrying a 12-player roster at Paris, with Lang hoping to appear as an alternate to the top six.
“I never thought it was possible to be a Paralympian,” she says. “I didn’t know they existed when I was younger. It is mind-boggling to me now that I actually play a sport where I take my leg off before I do it.”
She has reached a point where she embraces her disability. During pre-Paralympic workouts she carried five prostheses with her: an everyday leg, a running leg, a high-heel leg, a waterproof swimming leg and a snowboarding leg. “My suitcase is always heavy,” she says. “When people tell me they feel sorry for me because I only have one leg I tell them, ‘Why? I have more than you do.’ ”