Melissa Stockwell

Melissa Stockwell is an American Paralympic swimmer and triathlete and a former United States Army officer, born on 31 January 1980. As a first lieutenant she was deployed to Iraq in March 2004 and became the first female American soldier to lose a limb in the Iraq War, losing her left leg to a roadside bomb while leading a convoy in Baghdad; she received the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. She swam in three events at the 2008 Summer Paralympics, then turned to paratriathlon and won the women's TRI-2 world title at the 2010 ITU Paratriathlon World Championships in Budapest, defending it in 2011 and 2012. At the 2016 Paralympic Games she won bronze in the inaugural triathlon event. She is a prosthetist and a co-founder of the Chicago club Dare2Tri.