In the summer of 2016, Noelle Lambert was coming off her rookie season as a Division I lacrosse player when she suddenly lost her left leg in a moped crash on Barnes Road in Oak Bluffs.
Now the New Hampshire native is a two-time Paralympian.
After setting an American record for the 100-meter dash in Tokyo, Lambert came up just short of her ultimate goal — taking home a Paralympic medal — in Paris last week, finishing fourth in the long jump for full-leg amputees (T63 division) and seventh in the 100-meter dash.
The 27-year-old’s second jump on Thursday measured in at 4.66 meters, 40 centimeters shy of her personal best and the American record. She followed this up with a bound that appeared to match her record, and would have earned her a silver medal, but was ultimately negated because her prosthetic blade just barely slipped over the foul line on takeoff.
“She was a fraction over the line when she rocked forward. The prosthetic blade reacts differently depending on the track, which was soft and spongy,” Lambert’s agent, Kim Zayotti, said. “She’s not making an excuse, it just wasn’t her day. She’s very proud and very motivated.”
It was Lambert’s Paralympic debut in the long jump. She added the event to her repertoire over the winter, and qualified for Paris in July.
Two days later, Lambert had an equally eventful performance in the 100-meter dash. After breezing through some straightforward preliminary rounds, all chaos broke loose at the finish line of the championship race. Third-place finisher Monica Graziano Contrafatto of Italy had her blade slip out from under her, causing her teammate Ambra Sabatini to also fall and disrupt the pack behind them.
“It was a crazy race. Noelle had to slow it right at the end to not run into them,” Zayotti said. “It was scary.”
Lambert ultimately came in seventh, with a time of 15.39 seconds, 27-hundredths of a second off her personal best. She did manage to crush her sixth-place time from Tokyo three years ago, which was 15.97 seconds.
Now the 27-year-old is decompressing in Sardinia, but will hit the ground running next week in preparation for the annual World Para Athletics Championships in May.
“It was incredible for her to perform at that stage again, with her American teammates and all her international friends from previous competition and training — her tribe,” Zayotti said. “She’s already looking forward to Worlds. She is hungry.”
