Yesterday, US Paralympian Ezra Frech took home gold in the men’s 100m T63. Congrats, Ezra! In celebration, we revisit our HERO Summer Zine 8 feature with Frech, in conversation with fellow medal-winning, record-breaking Paralympian Trenten Merrill.

Ezra Frech is pushing himself to limits few can comprehend. As a Paralympian, the nineteen year-old has spent years training, honing and fine-tuning his body to become a world-class competitor in high jump, long jump, and the hundred-metre sprint. Since his first athletics meet at the Endeavor Games in Oklahoma at just eight years old, Frech has been breaking records and paving the way for disability rights through his foundation Angel City Sports – working to provide free access to training, equipment and competitive opportunities for people of all ages with physical disabilities. As one of the youngest athletes ever to represent the United States at the Paralympic Games (he made his debut at Tokyo 2020 at sixteen years-old), he’s now laser-focused on winning gold at this year’s Paris Paralympic Games. A generation above, fellow medal-winning, record-breaking Paralympian Trenten Merrill has admired Frech throughout his journey. Now spearheading Team USA, the duo challenge and encourage each other to always hit their best, and this summer they’re ready to take home gold.

Ezra Frech: Trent! Where are you right now?
Trenten Merrill: I’m in Germany training and doing some rehab stuff. I’m about to head to Italy, I’m actually applying for a Chinese visa now and there’s so much to do. 

EF: Why a Chinese visa? To train with your Italian coach out there?
TM: Yeah, he hit me up while we were in Japan right after the meet. We were reviewing film and he was like, “Hey Trent, you can actually come to China and work with me, you’ve got access to all the facilities, you just have to pay for your stay.” I was like, “No way?! Alright!” So now I’m trying to fill out the visa stuff and I’m planning to go to Rome to work on prosthetics. Did you train today? 

EF: Today’s a recovery day, I just got back from the World Championships [held at Kobe Universiade Memorial Stadium in Japan] and got right back to it. It was quite disappointing to lose my world title and get silver, but it exposed some flaws and mistakes that I was making so we’ve planned accordingly. The first high jump training session back was yesterday and things went really well, we made some changes to my approach and to my take-off that have massively impacted my rotation over the bar, which was part of the issue in Kobe. These two quarters that we’re working through right now for the next month or so are going to be really beneficial, I’ve been starting to see getting the silver at the Kobe World Championships as a blessing because I think it increases the odds that I win gold in Paris. Without that, some of these errors might have gone unnoticed. Then in Paris I would be making those same mistakes and risking losing the gold, versus catching them now, adjusting and prepping.
TM: Dude, either way, everything is working for you. You’re super motivated – even if you were to get the gold, you’d still be focusing on how to jump even higher, but for sure this is an accelerator. You’re like, “I don’t want this to happen again, what do I have to do to make sure I absolutely secure it?” 

EF: Have you felt good after Worlds?
TM: I felt the same thing. I underperformed, the first three jumps were about trying to get to the board and get the run up right, and in those last three I was starting to get into the rhythm and routine. Once I started looking at the film, I began self-correcting, there were only two things I knew would equate to bigger jumps and they were the arm action and my posture step, which is the penultimate step going into take off. It was really good for me to see that footage and then review it and know what we could change now after analysing the prosthetics, how we can increase blade performance and maximise blade performance with my technique. So [I need to] get healthy, number one, make sure I take care of my body because I was super beat up after and two, get to work on the prosthetics and technique. 

EF: Absolutely. We’ve known each other for a long time now, haven’t we?
TM: I’m trying to think about where we first met.

EF: My first memory of you is when we were at a track meet and you were wearing a really skin-tight white tank top where you could see your abs through the shirt. I was nine years old at the time and I remember thinking, “Damn, that guy is ripped.” I’m talking 2016 or 2017.
TM: Oh man, maybe it was a meet in California.

EF: I think it was Desert Challenge Games.
TM: Interesting, I would have been wearing the Altus uniform back then. You were just a kid – I knew of you for a long time because your dad had been doing the Angel City Games.

EF: We were close in Tokyo and afterwards, but we didn’t become really close until this year when we started training together, you came to LA and we started hanging out more.
TM: Yeah, no doubt. You started showing signs of being very mature for your age. I think that’s what brought us closer together, the commonality in goals and mindset. Not a lot of athletes have that mindset because it’s a vulnerable thing to put out these dreams that are very hard to achieve, because the failure rate is really high and people are afraid of what other people think. When I started hearing you speak like that, it pushed me to greater heights as well.

EF: I love it. It’s important to be surrounded by people who push you to be better and I feel like we push each other in different ways. I learned so much about body mechanics and nutrition and all of these details that are overlooked by 99 percent of athletes. My mindset, manifestation, goals and how overly ambitious I am is a daunting mindset for most people but is something you relate to.
TM: Yeah dude. Listening to Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps, they go to the extremes, and a lot of other athletes don’t – mentally and physically. You expect them to because you think if you’re in Olympic calibre you must do, but they also think all these athletes eat healthy and they don’t. There are athletes eating McDonald’s in the Olympic Village and people think I’m crazy when I bring it up but it’s true. When you started speaking to me I was like, “Woah, this is good,” because it’s hard to find people [with that level of commitment].

EF: We go to the extreme in every realm: training, recovery, sleep, nutrition, manifestation, visualisation, meditation, this is what we do. We put our all in and to be honest, I think that’s the way it has to be. I don’t think you can achieve something great by pursuing it in moderation. No person who pursued greatness in moderation ever accomplished it, it’s those who are obsessed and a little bit insane with it, those are the ones who succeed.
TM: One hundred percent.

EF: The journey of a Paralympic athlete is quite unique, everyone has a different way they got into the sport, and people have different commitment levels, but you and I are operating at the outer limits of our potential at all times. I know that’s both of our mentalities, we don’t want to look back after the Games and regret anything.
TM: To be honest, it’s not for everybody, less than one percent of people are doing it, but I just know in my own circumstance and in my life that’s what got me to where I am today. If I were to half-arse it, I would not be at the level I’m at today. This is my job, this is what I’m called to do from God, this is a God-ordained job. I’m doing some destiny work right here.

EF: I love that, “I’m doing destiny work right here.”
TM: Why wouldn’t you go all in?

EF: Absolutely. I grew up playing just about every sport there was, and then I fell in love with track and field at about eight-years-old. When I was eleven-years-old I was watching the Rio 2016 Paralympics, watching guys like you compete on the TV screen, and I had this out of body epiphany where I felt like the universe was telling me this was my calling and what I was meant to do with my life was to be a Paralympian. I committed to myself that I was going to make the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic team when I was eleven and I made that dream happen. From there, my track career took off. How did you get into Paralympic track and field?
TM: I also grew up playing a ton of sports and when I was fourteen-years-old I was hit by a car while on a little dirt bike and had my foot amputated. At the time, I was racing motocross, playing soccer and on my school volleyball team. After that, I stopped playing soccer because it wasn’t the same with a prosthetic foot, I continued to race motorcross, played volleyball and got into wrestling. I didn’t even know about the Paralympics until I got into community college, I wish that the Paralympics were a well-known thing in the US [back then] because that would’ve given me so much confidence and hope that having a disability was not what I originally thought. I didn’t know what I could and couldn’t do, but I met a Marine who told me he was still able to run, still ride motorcycles and still date girls, so that gave me the courage to do the same. [both laugh] There were a lot of kids I met who would tell me what they thought I could or couldn’t do, in high school people had a limited mindset and I wasn’t going to allow myself to be the same. Fast forwarding into community college, I got invited to a running clinic in California at Irvine Valley College and it was at the Össur Challenged Athletes Foundation running clinic where I met two Paralympians, they told me about track and field. I got invited by Coach [Joaquim] Cruz down to the training centre and that’s when I had that same moment you did when you were watching 2016 Rio. It was always my dream to be a professional athlete, but when I lost my foot I thought that was taken away from me. Then I saw all these Olympians and Paralympians training full-time and I said, “Dude this is the life I was created to live.” Then I got to work and it was just failure after failure for about five years until I made my first World Championship team in 2015. Then I just continued to rise up the ranks.

EF: That’s awesome. I didn’t even know it was Coach Cruz who did that. It’s unfortunate that someone can acquire a physical disability and think their life is over and think they’ll never get back to the same level of activity or happiness they had previously. As far as disability rights go, I think the narrative is shifting around the Paralympics and we’re reaching a point closer and closer to mainstream. I think we are nearing a point where the Paralympics is being recognised at a level equal to the Olympics. The awareness is continuing to grow globally, in certain countries in Europe and South America, the Paralympics is seen at the same level as the Olympics, but particularly in the US it’s lagging and granted there are parts of the world where it isn’t as great. There are parts of the world where people with disabilities are still forced into a life of being a beggar, have fewer job opportunities and are stereotyped or discriminated against, all of that still happens. The Paralympics is growing internationally at an exponential rate and I think it’s our job in the US to continue to push that narrative so that when the Games come to LA in 2028, that’s our moment to forever change the way society views disability. That’s what the Paralympics can do. It’s not just sport, it has a mass impact way beyond sport, and I know it’s a motivator for you. You and I can help drive the Paralympic movement forward so that another freshman in high school who gets hit by a car and loses their leg doesn’t need to meet all these people to realise they can still live a healthy active lifestyle, like you did. Have you felt the energy around it change globally in recent years?
TM: Globally yes, but I agree the US is still lagging behind. From the time I first found out about the Paralympics in 2010 to now, it is one hundred percent more mainstream than it’s ever been and I think social media is one of the biggest reasons. Social media is one of the best ways to educate people on the Paralympics and I think that’s why the US is becoming more aware of it, but as far as people knowing about it in towns coming to watch in person, it is still way behind compared to some other countries.

EF: I feel like the role of a sportsman is changing. As a Paralympian I’m sure you feel this too, I feel it is my duty to give back to the community. The platform I’ve been given through sport is so I can represent this community and normalise disability, so we can continue to change access to sports opportunities for those with disabilities. Athletes nowadays have another layer of responsibility, but then you and I – as Paralympians – have an even greater level of responsibility because our community is so intertwined with our purpose and the impact of what we’re doing, do you agree?
TM: Yes, I think it’s an awesome opportunity. If you or I decided we didn’t want to do that I think we’d be missing out on the opportunity to pave the way, inspire, give back, educate and help build this brand of being a disabled athlete.

EF: Absolutely.
TM: Paralympic trials are coming up – what other competitions have you got coming up?

EF: I’m just continuing to train leading into Paris, working hard. I’ll have a few important training sessions but no competitions until trials. I’m just working on the things we realised we were making mistakes on and how to correct them and move forward without letting those tendencies creep back in. I’m in a really good position and I’m more confident than I would’ve been had I easily won.
TM: No doubt. Right now, I’ve got to change and test a new prosthetic alignment because that will help me reach another level of long jumping further into the pit, then it’s about correcting technique stuff. I’m so committed I’m willing to move across the world to reach my goals, I’m willing to go to China if that’s what it means.

EF: I think our philosophy is great, we have to aim high. Aim for the stars and land on the moon, I think setting big, ambitious goals will pull us further than anything else and will motivate and drive us to be the best version of ourselves on and off the track. It’s daunting and vulnerable to put yourself out there, set goals which are extremely statistically unlikely when you look at it from an unbiased perspective, but you and I know what we’re capable of. To get further we must set unbelievably audacious and scary goals and then pursue them holistically with everything we have. That’s what we’re doing and we have the utmost belief in each other, ourselves, in our team and in what we’re capable of. We just gave the world a small taste of what is to come at Kobe in the World Championships and now we’re prepared to take the whole cake come Paris. I think you and I are capable of accomplishing greatness this summer.
TM: I completely agree. We want to be leaders, we want to be people who are paving the way for how to succeed in doing something people think is impossible. The only way to do the impossible is to believe it is possible.

Grooming by KELLY PEACH at WALTER SCHUPFER MANAGEMENT using PËR NË SKIN and SAIE; photography assistant PATRICK KIM; fashion assistant GABRIELLE RAM