Victoria Arlen

Victoria Arlen has overcome tremendous odds to become an accomplished athlete and motivational speaker. She was born in Boston on Sept. 26, 1994, and at the age of 11 developed two rare conditions - transverse myelitis and acute disseminated encephalomyelitis - that caused her to lose the ability to speak, eat, walk and move. Doctors thought she had little chance of survival, but Arlen fought through four years of being in a vegetative state and eventually began her near-impossible journey of re-learning the everyday tasks and functions that she had lost earlier. She later began training to become a Paralympic swimmer and qualified for the 2012 Summer Paralympic Games after a world-record performance at the U.S. swimming trials that secured her a spot on Team USA in London; she earned four medals - one gold and three silver. Arlen joined the media world in 2015, covering that year's Special Olympic World Games for ESPN, which led to her joining the network full-time later in the year as a contributing features reporter, providing content for female-focused espnW and ESPN's iconic "SportsCenter" (ESPN, 1979 - ). In April 2016, after being paralyzed from the waist down for nearly a decade, she learned to walk again. In September 2017 Arlen, who is also a motivational speaker, became one of the 13 celebrities competing on the 25th season of "Dancing With the Stars" (ABC, 2005 - ), paired with professional dancer Valentin Chmerkovskiy.