Adrian Nolasco turns devastating injury into a quest for Paralympic glory

Editor's note 8/14: A previous version of this article stated Adrian Nolasco worked at the Fortune Society. Nolasco did not work at the Fortune Society.

In July 2025, 26-year-old Adrian Nolasco lay in a hospital bed thousands of miles from home after losing his right leg in a hit-and-run in Tanzania. This November, the former Bronx School of Law and Finance student plans to run 26.2 miles across New York City.

Since getting a prosthetic in December, Nolasco, who now lives in Harlem, finished a 5K at Yankee Stadium and learned to swim as an amputee days before his first triathlon in California, where he placed third in his category. Now he’s training nearly daily for the New York City Marathon this fall, hoping to post a time that will help put him on a path toward qualifying for the U.S. Paralympic triathlon team.

“I really do think I could be one of the greatest Paralympic athletes for triathlon ever,” Nolasco said, adding because he has less than a year of adaptive training under his belt, the 2032 Games in Sydney, Australia seem a more realistic goal than the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.

Before the crash, Nolasco was working to earn a master’s degree in international relations and diplomacy at the School for International Training in Vermont, and interning with the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes, a peacebuilding organization in South Africa. That part of his old life has been more difficult to recover.

“Honestly, I don’t have the confidence for that anymore,” Nolasco said. “I don’t have the confidence to leave and go to another country and work.”

Although a career competing in athletics of any kind was never the original plan, he said, sports had been part of his life since childhood — one of the few constants through unstable times. Nolasco was removed from his mother’s home at 7 years old and spent much of his childhood cycling through foster care, group homes and, later, homeless shelters. He arrived at the Bronx School of Law and Finance, located on the Kennedy Campus in Marble Hill, as a teen in 2016 to register himself for classes, alone.

It was there that he met Doris Diaz-Negron, a longtime school counselor. She remembers Nolasco as a kid who rarely missed a day despite everything working against him. She’s remained a critical support system for Nolasco since he graduated, with Nolasco saying she’s the closest thing he has to a mother.

“I’m always in awe of everything that he’s been able to accomplish,” she said.

His ambition to become a Paralympian marks a sharp change from last summer, after a brief holiday in Tanzania ended with a life-saving above-the-knee amputation. While riding on the back of a motorcycle, Nolasco was struck by a driver who fled, shattering Nolasco’s right leg and leaving him critically injured on the roadway.

Following the amputation, his initial goal — after learning to walk again — was to preserve as much of his significantly active lifestyle as possible.  He began working out before he had even left the hospital, sometimes using his crutches to exercise without his nurses knowing.

When The Riverdale Press first interviewed him in August 2025, he was using those crutches and raising money for a Genium X4 prosthetic, which was not covered by Medicaid.  Through hundreds of GoFundMe contributions, his savings and taking out a hefty loan, he was able to purchase the Genium X4, a computerized prosthetic knee designed to automatically adjust to changes in terrain, walking speed and movement.

Nolasco described the first time he tried a prosthetic as feeling “so weird,” saying he was able to walk but could not feel his foot.

“I also just wasn’t mentally — I guess, probably accepting the fact that my leg is gone,” he said. “And it hit me when I looked in the mirror and I was trying to take those steps.”

By late April, he was moving more freely again, training five or six days a week, sometimes twice a day, with a goal of measuring himself not against other amputees, but against what his own body had been capable of before the crash.

After completing a 5K in May, he decided on a triathlon, explaining it was more attainable than running in a typical marathon or race because triathlons are centered around endurance rather than speed. He contacted the U.S. Paralympic program, which led him to a Dare2tri training camp, an adaptive sports organization. Until then, he had little experience with the technical side of the sport, he said.

Just two days before his first race, he was still learning how to swim competitively, use a wetsuit and bike shoes, and move through the transitions between each portion of a triathlon. He also had to learn to swim in open water — a job that fell to Sydney Miyatake, a swim instructor who volunteers at the camp and met Nolasco bobbing in the middle of the bay.

“I never once even remembered that he only had one leg while we were in the water,” Miyatake said.

Nolasco swims without his prosthetic, meaning he has to approach the water by hopping before leaving the leg behind. Once submerged, he said, the water gives him a sense of balance that is more difficult to find on land.

The competition kicked off with a 750-meter swim, followed by a roughly 10-mile bike ride and 3.5-mile run. Nolasco had not swum in the ocean in years, much less raced through it with one leg.

“I just told myself something,” he said. “This is not your body, you’re just living in it. So forget your emotions.”

He kept going and finished third in his category. Miyatake, who also raced that day, recalled him saying afterward, “I can do something with this.”