Letchen du Plessis hasn’t just earned gold at the Adaptive CrossFit Games. She’s overcome incredible adversity that included the loss of functioning in her leg, multiple surgeries, rehabilitation and most importantly, resilience:
San Antonio, Texas (25 September 2024) — Over the weekend, Letchen du Plessis made South Africa enormously proud when she won gold in the ‘Moderate Neurological Impairment’ category at the Adaptive CrossFit Games—a challenge that tests both physical power and discipline but also gives the spotlight to champions who have shown how much resilience can achieve.
Here, Letchen shone for South Africa with the culmination of years of effort and a story that’ll remind you why never giving up matters.
What began as an injury on the netball court years ago would eventually reveal itself as the catalyst that changed Letchen’s life forever.
An avid netball and water polo player, Letchen decided to take netball on more professionally and was offered a scholarship to play the sport at North-West University. The young athlete was training hard and often. However, an injury that put her hip out at the end of practice became a much bigger problem a few weeks down the line, and it was eventually discovered during a procedure to heal what had been damaged that her bone was not receiving blood.
Letchen was told that she needed to make a big choice to either receive a hip replacement or undergo experimental surgery. Choosing the latter, one surgery became many after she found herself struggling to handle basic actions like putting on her socks. Under the surface, this was not just a byproduct of post-op recovery. In actuality, she was dealing with something much more serious—her left leg was no longer responding due to nerve trauma, and she was diagnosed with complex regional pain syndrome and dystonia.
In spite of her surgical successes, doctors were led to understand that the trauma of her hip dislocation and the surgeries could’ve provoked her leg to essentially be perceived as an enemy to her brain—meaning she had adverse reactions to basic sensations like water on her leg, plus a lack of responsiveness.
For someone who considered themselves an athlete for so much of their life, the shock of her new reality was heart-wrenching. But, the resilience her life in sport had taught her was still very much alive.
By 2019, she had received a spinal cord stimulator and understood herself as ‘semi-bionic’. CrossFit became an important part of her rehabilitation and, soon, her passion.
It wasn’t long until the long and gruelling road to learning how to live with her ‘new’ leg inspired her to compete in the 2021 CrossFit Games, where she absolutely killed it despite some hiccups.
“Letchen faced daunting challenges that many might have found insurmountable,” says Motley Crew CrossFit coach Jason Solomon, who has trained her. “However, with her characteristic grit, she refused to let her condition define her future.”
Of the 2021 NOBULL Cross Fit Games, Jason shares that it was monumental for the athlete.
“That first day [of the Games] tested her in ways she hadn’t expected—told to run three miles, something her body wasn’t physically prepared for, she made the decision to hop and skip her way through the entire course,” he explains. It was there that footage captured her struggle; footage that inspired Fraser Allen and Sean Adams to help develop a unique brace just for her.
This custom brace enabled her to engage muscles she had not been able to use in years.
“For the first time in a long while, she could run without crutches—an emotional milestone that set her on the path to success in her sport,” Jason shares.
By 2022, Letchen was competing powerfully at the 2022 CrossFit Games. And to see this followed with the 2024 success was not just a win for her and all who have supported her, but the entire country and all the people who have been told before that they’d reached the end of the road.
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For Letchen, it’s all about focusing on what you can control instead of obsessing over what you can’t. She’s gone on not only to solidify her place as a CrossFit champion but has tackled other athletic endeavours like the formidable Robben Island Crossing.
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Adds an immensely proud Jason:
“Letchen has shown the world that, despite challenges, anything is possible with the right mindset. As she says ‘it’s not your disability stopping you but your mind most of the time.’
“Today, Letchen du Plessis is more than just an athlete—she’s a symbol of hope, determination, and the power of the human spirit. Whether she’s lifting in the gym, running through a CrossFit course, or inspiring the next generation of athletes, one this is certain: her story is far from over.”
Sources: Email Submission; CrossFit Games
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