Jarryd Wallace wanted to run, in every sense of the word.
On the track, on the dirt and grass of a cross-country course, or on the road, just as he had since he was a child tagging along on his mother's laps around the neighborhood.
MORE: 10 athletes to watch at Rio | Paralympics Games schedule
But more so, right at that moment, he wanted to escape the diagnosis that had led doctors to sit him down and explain to him that, at age 17, he might end up losing part of his right leg. As a high school senior, a standout distance runner who had won a pair of Georgia state championships the year before, it was a notion he couldn't fathom.
"It was a crazy, overwhelming experience because for so long I had wrapped my identity in who I was as an athlete, I wrapped my identity in who I was as a runner and winning races," Wallace said. "At 17, I don't think anybody really knows who they are, but when you take the kind of one thing you identify yourself with away, you start getting scared and start asking some big questions. It was a scary process."
Wallace couldn't have imagined at the time that the journey he was about to begin would culminate in his reaching heights he never would have contemplated. But this was before he got swallowed up by the pain, the drugs, the despair over what he would be losing if they took his leg and came out the other side — 10 surgeries later — buoyed by an unshakable faith.
When Wallace settles into the starting blocks at Rio's Olympic Stadium on Thursday afternoon for the first round of the T44 classification 100 meters, he'll do so with the confidence that he is one of the top amputee sprinters on the planet. A spot on the Paralympic Games podium is well within his reach if all goes according to plan this week in Brazil, and by the time he crosses the finish line in the final early Friday evening, the 26-year-old will have done everything possible to put himself on the top step.
The sequence of events that brought him this far began with those childhood runs alongside his mother, Sabina, who is among the top five 5,000-meter runners in University of Georgia track and field history more than 30 years after graduating. Her son grew to love the sport just as she did, but found that their journeys had something else in common: pain.
Sabina had dealt with compartment syndrome, a condition that causes painful pressure inside the muscles and can cut off blood flow to extremities. Jarryd started experiencing similar symptoms as a sophomore in high school. The initial diagnoses was a stress fracture, but the pain never went away, and Jarryd decided that he had to find a solution if he wanted to pursue a running career in college.
He had surgery after his senior season of cross country, expecting to be recovered in time to participate in track in the spring. But days after the procedure, doctors removed the bandages to find that 60 percent of the muscle from his knee down was dead.
So began an arduous process that led to Wallace's leg becoming deformed, his foot twisting out of place to the point that questions arose about whether he would even be able to walk normally again, let alone run. It took more than two years for Wallace to make the decision that would allow him to regain the type of life he sought — by letting go of his lower right leg.
He finally made that decision in mid-2010 after a doctor asked him what he really wanted to do with his life, if his leg was taken out of the equation.
"Well, I'd like to run again, there's a no-brainer," Wallace recalled saying. "I'd love to have a family one day and be able to play with the kids in the yard. Work a regular job. I'd love not to be in pain.
"(The doctor) basically said those things are not realistic, but if you have an amputation you would be able to do that. It would eliminate the pain and allow you to do those things again.
"What happened in that moment is he caused me to begin to dream again. I looked back over the last two years of trauma and pain and I had stopped dreaming, because I thought I was stuck, because the circumstances that I was in didn't allow me to do the things I wanted to do, so I thought I would never be able to do them again. … That was when I realized that, I don't know the end goal, I don't know exactly what it's going to look like, but I know that this is a step in the right direction."
Wallace left the doctor's office, found his laptop, and looked up Paralympic sport. He browsed the list of world records and vowed that his name one day would be on it. On June 22, 2010, his right leg was amputated below the knee. By the end of that year he was training full time, and two years after the procedure he walked in awe into the Olympic Stadium in London to compete in the 400 meters at the 2012 Paralympic Games.
That experience only primed him for more, and he heads to Rio knowing he already has accomplished some of the goals he set after leaving that doctor's office.
First and foremost, Wallace is about to get started on having a family. He will marry Lea Babcock on Oct. 8, exactly a month after he'll run the 100-meter prelims in Rio.
On the track, he'll enter those heats as one of the favorites and a threat to break the world record for the second time in a little over a year. The mark of 10.71 seconds that he set in winning gold at last summer's Parapan Am Games fell to U.S. teammate Richard Browne at the 2015 World Championships, which Wallace missed with an injury. But Browne has been hurt this summer and will not compete in Rio. That leaves Wallace as the standard-bearer for the U.S. in the 100, and only Great Britain's Jonnie Peacock (10.68) has run faster than him this year.
Perhaps no event in sports has a slimmer margin for error than the 100 meters, where the most miniscule tweak can result in the gain or loss of a crucial hundredth of a second, but Wallace could not be better prepared than he is.
"Ultimately, the loss of my leg, the amputation of my leg, was the gain of my life," he said.
And this time, there's far more to it than just running.
