Swimmer David Gelfand Is Engineering A New Endeavor As A Para Climber

For many years, David Gelfand’s active life revolved around the pool.

He joined his first swim team at 6, started with the Para swimming program a couple of years later and made the U.S. Paralympics Swimming national “C” team six years ago. And while he hasn’t completely hung up his goggles, Gelfand has stepped back from elite swimming and is now focusing on his career and a new sport to channel his competitive energy: Para climbing.

“Since the Paris (Paralympic) trials and even since Tokyo trials, where I spent so much time and energy preparing for that, living at the Olympic & Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, I’ve been really a whole lot more focused on doing other things outside of the pool,” he said. “I still love swimming, I still swim regularly, but yeah, I’ve been exploring some of those other interests.”

Gelfand, who was born with no hip socket and a small bone comprising his left leg — known as proximal femoral focal deficiency — grew up in Weston, Connecticut, and always loved being outdoors. Whether it was bike riding, hiking or rock climbing he just loved being outside and being active. As he became more involved in swimming, his participation in other sports fell to the side, but his love of the outdoors and outdoor pursuits never went away. When a friend asked him three years ago if he wanted to join him at the climbing gym, Gelfand was quick to say yes.

“I’ve been hooked since, and started climbing probably four times a month and just really enjoying that as cross-training for swimming,” he said. “And lately I’ve just been doing it more and more.”

Gelfand now lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he uses his engineering degree from Tufts working for a company that develops sports medicine surgical instrumentation and implants. He found a Para climbing group in Tampa — ParaCliffHangers, a national organization — and they got him interested in competing. He made his competition debut at the USA Climbing Para Climbing National Championships in March.

“(ParaCliffHangers) got me excited about going to nationals and the opportunity to compete with Team USA in climbing, and they gave me the confidence and bits of technique and some of those teaching points that really helped me prepare for the national competition, where I did quite well,” he said.

Gelfand placed seventh in his classification and earned a spot on the USA Climbing national development team that will give him access to resources including USA Climbing coaches and training programs. He hopes to make his international debut this year and is already thinking about the sport’s inclusion at the Paralympics for the first time in Los Angeles in 2028.

So what does he love most about climbing?

“I’m an engineer, so I love solving problems,” Gelfand said. “I love the hard work of figuring something out and turning a problem over and over until you find a solution, until you can get to the top, and that’s exactly what climbing is. It’s looking at, Where do I put my body? How do I pull on this hold? How do I move my weight? How do I hold onto the wall and get up the most efficiently, the fastest, the cleanest? That’s what drew me to it and that’s one of the parts I really enjoy about it.”

As of January, Gelfand is no longer on the U.S. Para swimming national team. New rules state that a “C” team athlete must move up to “B” team standards after two years in order to continue receiving support, and now that Gelfand is working full-time he doesn’t have the time or energy to devote to swimming the way he once did. But he still swims with his local masters team, and having a job he loves has helped the transition.

“I’m a research and development engineer, and we’re just launching a surgical instrument to market that I developed from concept to release and FDA submission and approval,” said Gelfand, who uses a prosthetic leg. “It’s a surgical implant used for rotator cuff repair. It’s pretty cool being on the other side of sports medicine, being involved in sports medicine surgical devices.”

As a multi-talented athlete several times over, climbing isn’t the only sport Gelfand is now involved with, either. After playing sled hockey as a kid, he joined a team two and a half years ago in Florida and recently competed with the Tampa Bay Lightning sled team at the USA Hockey Sled National Championship. He scored two goals in four games.

“I’m really enjoying getting to be a part of a team sport,” he said. “It’s a different challenge, a different way of thinking about it, and a lot of these sports play to some of those strengths from swimming. I think there is a lot of synergy between the sports that have allowed me to keep going and be competitive.”

Karen Price is a reporter from Pittsburgh who has covered Olympic and Paralympic sports for various publications. She is a freelance contributor to USParaSwimming.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.