The 2012 Olympic Games might be over for some athletes, but for those participating in this year’s Paralympic Games, the competition has not yet begun.

One of those athletes is Long Beach resident Angela Madsen, who will be representing Team USA at the 2012 Paralympic Games, which begin this Wednesday. Madsen holds the world record in the shotput and the American record in the javelin, and she’ll be competing in both events in London. But Madsen’s track-and-field achievements only begin to tell the story of her amazing athletic career and the perseverence and determination that drive it.

An accomplished athlete before a botched back surgery in 1993 rendered her paraplegic, Madsen went on to become a pioneer in the world of adaptive rowing. In 2010 she set a Guinness World Record for circumnavigating the British Isles with a 4-woman rowing team. She also holds Guinness records for the fastest rowing traverse of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and was a one-woman dynasty at the Adaptive Rowing National and World Championships for a decade.

“The disabled ones are the ones who aren’t trying,” says Madsen, who shares her relentlessly positive attitude with other “differently abled” athletes at various sports camps throughout California. “It doesn’t get any better until you make it better.”

Born to a military family in Xenia, Ohio, Angela was a scrappy competitor who excelled in softball, volleyball and basketball (“I wasn’t the tallest, but if there was a loose ball, it was mine,” she says). Madsen became a US Marine in 1979 and fell in love with the ocean and Long Beach while stationed here.

“I started surfing and never went back,” she says.

Her athletic prowess led to her selection to the Marine basketball team, but she suffered a back injury while playing, which led to the life-altering operation. Madsen is remarkably free of bitterness, despite the difficult struggles she has faced since then.

“Carrying that stuff around is like trying to row with an anchor,” she says. “In moving forward, though, you have to let go.”

Madsen turned to rowing as “a vehicle to restore me, to restore hope,” she says. In addition to becoming a dominating competitor, she has also applied her mechanical engineering background to the innovation and improvement of adaptive rowing rigs.

Several years ago, Angela met local track and field coach Aaron Volkoff at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista. They teamed up, and the two have spent countless hours perfecting the kinesthetics of Madsen’s throws.

“Each of us ‘differently abled’ athletes requires different modifications,” says Madsen. She’s prepared to compete at her highest level in the Paralympic Games, and she’s excited about a return trip to Great Britain. “I’ve spent a lot of time in London,” she says. “I have quite a few friends there.”

Over 2.4 million tickets have been sold for this year’s Paralympic Games in London. Many events will take place in venues used at the just-concluded Olympiad. Spectators can enjoy familiar Olympic sports like track and field and swimming, but will also be introduced to competitions unique to the Paralympic Games, like Goalball, a game similar to Team Handball, played by blind athletes who use a ball with a bell embedded inside.

Paralympic athletes are grouped into six broad categories according to their condition (Angela is in the wheelchair category). Within each category, athletes are given a classification to ensure that they’ll be competing on equal terms. When Angela gets into her custom chair to throw, she’ll get two warm-up throws and will then do her six competitive throws consecutively: Having the athletes alternate throws would be too time-consuming. Athletes can also request to use another athlete’s throwing chair at any time in the competition.

This autumn may find avid surfer Angela back in the water, relaxing with some mean cutbacks on some local waves. But for now, Madsen is taking her skills global, hoping to add to the remarkable legacy of the 2012 United States Olympians.

“Clearly,” she says, “this is the path I’m supposed to be on.”

For more about Angela, visit angelamadsen.com. For up-to-date information on when Angela will be competing during the Paralympic Games, visit her Olympic profile page. To watch a livestream of the Games, go to the Paralympics’ official website.

Photos by Matt Cohn.