Kayleigh Williamson, a marathoner with Down syndrome, has already made history several times… but she’s just done it again, becoming one of the first women with Down syndrome to finish the New York City Marathon.
Williamson became the first person with Down syndrome to complete the Austin Marathon last year, and in 2017, she was the first person with Down syndrome to finish the Austin Half Marathon. Earlier this year, she also ran the Boston Marathon. She trains alongside her mother, Sandy Williamson, who told Fox 7 Austin, “I’ve always raised Kayleigh that you don’t let what others think you can and cannot do cap you.”
The mother-daughter duo didn’t always have it easy; doctors were not optimistic about Kayleigh’s future.
“The moment she was born, I was told everything she couldn’t do,” Sandy told KVUE last year, saying doctors urged her to either place Kayleigh with an adoptive family or put her into an institution. Neither was an option — even after Kayleigh’s father abandoned them. They persevered, however, and turned to running to combat health problems.
“In 2008, Kayleigh was diagnosed with ITP – low blood platelets – and we didn’t know why,” Sandy said. “Then she was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and then hyperthyroidism. She was 215 pounds, she had sleep apnea, she was pre-diabetic.” Kayleigh’s grandmother encouraged the family to make some healthy changes, which started with walking and eventually, led to running. And it’s made a huge difference. “She’s no longer pre-diabetic, she no longer has sleep apnea,” Sandy said.
Earlier this year, Kayleigh’s grandmother — who put her on the path towards running — died of Alzheimer’s disease, and it’s that memory that pushes Kayleigh to keep going. “My grandma always told me to run fast,” she said, adding that when she runs, she feels she can hear her grandmother speaking to her.
Together, mother and daughter took on the New York City Marathon, and finished… with an emotional video of Kayleigh crying as she crossed the finish line going viral. Shared by the official New York City Marathon Instagram page, it’s been liked hundreds of thousands of times, and racked up over 10,000 comments congratulating Kayleigh.
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Tina Muir, a former British pro runner, also posted about Kayleigh’s incredible accomplishment, saying, “I don’t even know how to put into words what [Kayleigh] did yesterday.” Muir ran alongside Kayleigh as her guide.
“Ten hours of incredibly hard work and perseverance, plenty of dancing along the way, and making thousands of people literally light up with joy and love in seeing this momentous journey she was taking. Inspiring them not only with her trail blazing, but her pure light giving interactions with everyone out there,” Muir wrote. “She did it for grandma, for her amazing mama [Sandy], to carve a path for others, and of course, most importantly, for herself.”
