SMITHFIELD— Sara Miranda left her studies at Utah State University for a trip to Singapore for the 2025 IPC World Swimming Championships on Sept. 13. The world paralympic swimming event she will be attending is scheduled for Sept. 21 through the 27th, and she will represent her home country of Costa Rica.
Miranda was born with Spina Bifida but found swimming to be therapeutic and she excels at it.
She uses crutches to get around to her classes at USU in her second year as a geology major, but when she is in the water she feels like she is in a different world; she can move like anyone else. Being in the water gives her a chance to feel like people who use their legs to walk.
“I have a disability, when I walk, I need my crutches to move,” Miranda said. “When I’m in the water I can move without crutches, I can move like anyone else does.”
The Costa Rica native became a competitive paralympic swimmer and swam in a host of competitions all over the United States, Mexico, Nicaragua, Colombia, Chile, and Costa Rica. Her family moved to Utah when her father started working in the Space Dynamics Lab at the university.
Her parents introduced her to swimming as therapy when she was 5 years old and it took off from there.
“I was doing gymnastics when I was younger and I saw the Olympics on the television,” she said. “I told my mom I wanted to go to the Olympics. We found out there was no gymnastics for people with disabilities, but they did have swimming, so I decided on that.”
“I started swimming competitively when I was 8-years-old,” she said. “I went to nationals at 12-years-old.”
Now at 20-years-old, Miranda intensified her workouts preparing for the Singapore event. She works out in the pool for an hour in the morning and two hours in the evening six days a week.
Robert Clinton was her coach when she was part of the Cache Valley Marlins while in high school and he continued coaching her after she graduated from Ridgeline High School.
“She trains at the Smithfield Rec Center, Mountain Crest pool and the University pool in the HPER Building,” he said. “She does well, she is ranked in 9th in the world in the 100-meter backstroke and 13th in the world in the 400-meter freestyle.”
There are four other Paralympians from Costa Rica, and she is the only one competing at the competition in Singapore from her country.