Having Already Defied The Odds To Become An Elite Swimmer, Koehn Boyd Looks To Remian ‘Unstoppable’ At Para Pacs

Koehn Boyd can thank his love of food for helping him realize that he’s a fast swimmer.

Boyd had been swimming for only a few weeks when he attended his first swim meet at 7 years old. He asked his father for a snack before a race, but his father told him that he’d need to wait until he was done swimming before he could eat anything.

That made sense to Boyd. When it was time, he jumped into the 50-meter pool, won his 100 race and then strolled back to where his father was sitting to eagerly receive his snack.

“So, I get out, walk all the way around the pool back to my dad, grab the snack and sit down and start eating it,” said Boyd, a native of Ramsey, Minnesota. “And once I sat down and finished, like once I got back to my dad with my snack, the next kid touched (the wall for) second place.”

A decade later, Boyd hasn’t lost his appetite for being one of the world’s fastest Para swimmers. In June, the 17-year-old put together a dominant performance at the 2026 U.S. Paralympics Swimming National Championships in Boise, Idaho, to become the first athlete to ever be named the Swimmer of the Meet for three consecutive years.

He won five events at nationals, including three on the opening day of the meet.

Boyd will delay the start of his senior year of high school a few days to compete at his first Para Pan Pacific Swimming Championships, which starts on Friday and runs through Sunday in Walnut, California. The S10 swimmer plans to compete in three events — the 100 freestyle, the 100 fly and the 200 individual medley.

While in Southern California for the international meet, Boyd got an opportunity to see where the pool for the Paralympic Games Los Angeles 2028 will be built. He hopes to make his Paralympic debut there in two years.

“It’s kind of cool to just visualize where it’s going to be,” Boyd said, “so definitely, definitely that is the goal — LA ‘28.”

As much as he appreciates all the accolades and medals that he has been winning lately, Boyd said he’s more interested in inspiring people with his performances in the pool. After all, he admitted that someone born in Ukraine without abdominal muscles shouldn’t be able to swim.

“I think what swimming did was allow me to just kind of be in an area of competition with other people and just feel like the same (as them) because I feel limitless in the water,” Boyd said. “Like truly, I feel like I’m unstoppable.”

That wasn’t always the case for him, though.

Boyd was born with prune belly syndrome, a rare condition that resulted in him having no stomach muscles. If he’s lying on his back, it’s physically impossible for him sit up since he has no core. He was also born with hip dysplasia, which gives him a very limited range of motion in his right leg.

Since Boyd has balance issues out of the water, he decided to give swimming a try as a kid after a family friend recommended it.

“I think I just use a lot of my back muscles, and I’m able to manipulate the water very well. So, with my legs and arms, I think I’m able to just pull and kick kind of like an able-bodied human,” Boyd said. “But like (with the) butterfly and breaststroke, you kind of need a core to lift your body and head out of the water. And I think my body has just learned to use my back muscles.”

Boyd said the butterfly is without a doubt his best stroke. And even though he’s always the last swimmer off the blocks at the start of a race, he “makes up for it in the water.”

In September 2025, he won a pair of silver medals at the Singapore 2025 World Para Swimming Championships in the 200 IM SM10 and 400 freestyle.

Boyd reached another milestone this summer when he committed to swim for the University of South Dakota, which he considers an especially big accomplishment since the Coyotes are an NCAA Division I program. It will give him another chance to swim against able-bodied athletes and show people that he has no limitations.

“I’m super excited to represent Team USA and on a college team, specifically D1. I think that’s very cool,” Boyd said. “It’s definitely been one of my goals for a very long time, so I’m very excited to have accomplished that one and checked it off (my list).”

Alex Abrams has written about Olympic sports for more than 15 years, including as a reporter for major newspapers in Florida, Arkansas and Oklahoma. He is a freelance contributor to USParaSwimming.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.