Egypt’s Hoda Elshorbagy places in top 10 in Boston Marathon wheelchair division

🏆 The 130th Boston Marathon took place a couple of days ago on Monday, 20 April. Approximately 30k runners from around the world finished the iconic race this year — among them, 35-year-old Hoda Elshorbagy, an Egyptian wheelchair racer from a small village near Mansoura. You may not have heard of Elshorbagy, and we hadn’t either until her remarkable story was recently brought to our attention.

Elshorbagy secured ninth place in the women’s wheelchair division at the Boston Marathon. Clocking a time of 1:45:22, Elshorbagy’s performance places her firmly among the ranks of top athletes worldwide. Her admirable achievement this week is the culmination of a decade spent defying odds and engineering a career in a sport that effectively did not exist for women in Egypt.

Elshorbagy’s story begins with some medical misfortune. A botched polio vaccination administered at eight months old left her tragically paralyzed. Over the next 16 years, she underwent 13 surgeries that resulted in restoring some of her mobility. She was eventually able to stand and walk with crutches, but that wasn’t enough for Elshorbagy.

While still a student in Egypt, the itch for athletic pursuit began to nag at her. She picked up weightlifting and discus throwing alongside her university studies — placing first in both disciplines on a national level in 2011 and 2014. By 2016, a televised broadcast of wheelchair racing at the Rio Paralympics captured her attention. “I decided from that day that I will do this sport no matter what the obstacle is, and I will go through it and I will reach my goal,” Elshorbagy told Runner’s World.

Elshorbagy had to self-learn the mechanics of the sport via YouTube videos. Coaching for track events was non-existent for disabled female athletes in Egypt when Elshorbagy began. She had to take English courses so she could better comprehend technical advice from the international champions she found online. Her initial equipment was a patchwork of locally built DIY gear. A custom-welded frame served as her first racing chair and her first pair of gloves were handmade by a friend.

The streets of Mansoura served as Elshorbagy’s initial training ground. Those who saw her on the streets and highways didn’t quite know what to make of her, and weren’t always supportive. “I got really upset, but after that, I took it as a chance to spread awareness about what I’m doing and teach them about the sport of wheelchair racing,” Elshorbagy told the runners’ magazine. She deliberately chose a pink racing chair that eventually became her signature tool for visibility, designed to raise awareness about the presence of disabled people in public spaces.

Many of the YouTube videos that Elshorbagy consumed featured wheelchair racing coach Adam Bleakney at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. After years of training and working with other international coaches whose attention she was able to garner, Elshorbagy relocated in 2023 to the University of Illinois, a global hub for disability sports, where she is currently completing a degree in kinesiology and training under Bleakney.

What’s next for Elshorbagy? She looks forward to continuing to make history and one day representing Egypt at the Paralympic Games. Raising awareness about her sport in Egypt and the Middle East is also a priority for Elshorbagy, who says she wants to show her “country and the world how a person with a disability can accomplish what seems impossible.”

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