Swimming to walk: Mayte Puca's story, from being bedridden and living a painful childhood to constantly winning aquatic marathons

The circuits of the world open water calendar seem easy when Mayte Puca dives in to navigate them. Her strokes exude excellence while her winning instinct drives her toward the finish line. Through any storm or rough swell, the Bariloche native imposes her remarkable methodology and racks up first places like goggles. Race after race, she is filled with pride for demonstrating an admirable skill that seemed impossible in her childhood. For as long as she can remember, she has been swimming to survive .

2025 only offered him success: he won everything he competed in . In the country he won the 10 kilometers of the Oceanman Argentina, held in Córdoba, and fulfilled the deep desire he had since he was 16 years old: he won the 57 kilometers of the legendary Santa Fe-Coronda .

During her international tour, she shined in Canada at the 32-kilometer "Traversée internationale du lac St-Jean," then triumphed at the 25-kilometer Ohrid Race in Macedonia , and closed the year on the top of the podium at the 36-kilometer Capri-Napoli race. But her priority isn't results, it's finishing races on foot.

The only thing that exists within her is the hope and desire to improve herself that has accompanied her since her childhood, when she was forced to adapt to a life with limitations due to malpractice at birth, which caused a hip dislocation, which she grew up with and adapted to by undergoing extremely tough, demanding, and, in its beginnings, cruel therapy.

For Mayte, swimming is not only a passion but also the best therapy she has for walking. The 27-year-old Argentinian began swimming as a form of rehabilitation to prevent her condition from worsening and to relieve her persistent pain .

In Canada, she led the men for over two hours. "Without a swimming strategy," she says, she followed her heart despite the pain that appeared in her hip during the final stretch and touched the finishing wall in fourth place, the best woman.

" I waited for this moment for a decade. When I arrived, I touched my hip and it was like telling him I could do it. It was also like looking up to the sky and telling Dad I could do it. He saw me in a cast; he'd never seen me compete. 'Look at me touching a plaque after 57 kilometers: we could do it, Dad,' " Mayte confesses in an interview with Clarín .

Upon reaching the shore, with her mother watching over her, a "fundamental pillar" in her life, as she "never gave up" on her daughter's wishes, all that remained was to overcome her greatest challenge: managing to stand up and walk away without complications. And of course, she succeeded.

Mayte isn't primarily concerned with the results she's achieved since she first stood on the podium at age 16 after setting out to swim 7.5 kilometers in a national tournament. Her coaches had given her a resounding "no"; she had only swum a maximum of 4 kilometers during the Bariloche summer, and the competitive open water environment meant taking greater risks than her daily practice suggested.

"I went in my regular training suit. Coaches who've known me since I was 9 explained hydration to me. I didn't understand anything; I'd only been swimming," she admits.

Mayte finished second and after her success in the water, she discovered a fear on the shore that would accompany her for the rest of her life .

“I had started to feel discomfort in my hip during the swim, but when I arrived, I put weight on my leg and couldn't. It was getting weaker, and it was the same feeling I had when I was 3 or 4. I would step and fall. I got scared and told my mom I couldn't walk and couldn't feel my legs. Two people carried me and left me in a wheelchair. I couldn't walk for two days,” she recalls of that first experience worthy of a horror story.

Mayte, who didn't feel defeated or conditioned by what she had suffered, resolved that it "wouldn't" happen to her again and began preparing for greater challenges.

She never lost focus or her mantra of choice: "Swim to walk, and then walk after swimming." No triumphant or self-important speeches. After those two days without being able to walk, the young woman resolved to overcome every prejudice and honor the rehabilitation work she's been doing since the pain hit her reality.

“It still hurts, but much less. We're 10 years removed from when I first had the idea of ​​swimming in every race and walking out on my own. I know many people want to help me, but I need to do it alone,” she says of her ambition.

For Mayte, swimming is the only support that keeps her hip healthy, which, as a result of four surgeries she underwent at the Garrahan Hospital during her childhood, remains “ at the limit and on the verge of dislocating” due to irreversible “muscle atrophy” and the loss of “ligaments and quite a bit of muscle.”

Her story is heart-stopping: “When I was born, the diagnosis was that I had a congenital hip dislocation. Later, it was determined that malpractice was involved, and that during delivery one leg had been pulled harder than the other . Apparently, since I was born sitting up, they applied too much force and caused a dislocation.”

Her father was the one who "noticed something was wrong" when, at 8 months old, Mayte began to struggle with the walker. "They told me they had to strap me in and, using harnesses, pull the affected leg to make it even. It was torture because I was a baby. With each surgery, it got much worse, " she explains.

The fourth and final surgery, due to the deterioration resulting from the cruelty of the procedure, involved rotating the head of a femur, which took nine hours and caused trauma to the healthy acetabulum of a 5-year-old girl.

“ It was serious; I almost died from excessive anesthesia. I have no memory of it because the anesthesia failed, and I couldn't wake up,” the swimmer emphasizes, as if the aforementioned weren't enough. None of the results were as desired, and nothing made it possible for Mayte to walk before the age of 7 , when she still had one year left until what would be a major turning point in her life.

His sister, who was studying medicine in Cuba, arranged for him to be transferred and stay for three months, during which they conducted innovative mobility studies, which led to a single conclusion.

“Getting a prosthesis wasn't a good idea, and they recommended rehabilitation exercises. The options were cycling or swimming. The only thing I learned during that time was how to cope with what had happened to me, because there was no solution, ” she says, later emphasizing that she believes they “saved my life” and that her “purpose would be very different” if they hadn't chosen “the best discipline” for her.

Swimming had never been his favorite sport until, with no other option, he took it as his only medicine and began training in a heated pool at the Los Pehuenes club in Bariloche.

Nothing will bring back Mayte's childhood, which she lost due to the bullying she suffered from her peers who felt "more normal than her" because they walked normally.

“ From the age of 3, I only remember being bedridden. Because of all the surgeries, I didn't have a childhood. As a little girl, I was just trying to crawl, with all the equipment I had. They'd leave me in the yard with my dad in tow. I couldn't do much more than that. I was born that way, so it was always normal for me. The weird thing was when I had to go to elementary school and live with a lot of kids,” she says.

His way of channeling whatever was happening to him out of the water was based on becoming increasingly professional, turning every excessive comment and every offensive "no" he received into fuel.

“I used everything that happened to me as motivation to compete and show that, even though I couldn't walk like them, I could excel at other things. It was a motivation or a defense mechanism that I used, and it worked. I also considered the pool my safe place, where I was comfortable and we were all equal: there was no difference in the water,” she says.

And she highlights the excitement she gets from seeing her childhood photos now that she's "doing these crazy things," which were initially considered "impossible," but which were achieved with a lot of effort and a great team.

The key element in his preparation is his coach, whom he met in Mexico when he traveled at age 18 to study for a degree in Criminal Investigation, from which he graduated with "the highest average of his entire class."

José Luis Prado Medel was an Olympic swimmer in Munich 1972 and Montreal 1976, and at 68, he's still swimming. Because Mayte needed to maintain her swimming routine to avoid pain, she "adopted" it during the year she had to remain in Mexico awaiting her title.

"I consider him my dad -coach, because that's what he is. We have this relationship: he's my father and I'm his daughter, as is his wife, who's my Mexican mother. We maintain a very close bond," he recalls.

Upon returning to Bariloche, the distance from her coach didn't stop her from swimming. But the pandemic forced her to avoid a pool for five months. In extreme pain and struggling to walk, Mayte clung to her bike and continued her rehabilitation with whatever resources were available to her.

"It made it impossible for me to even walk. It even hurt to sleep ," he summarizes, clarifying that when the isolation ended , it took him three days to return to living without that stabbing pain .

Unable to leave the pool and receiving praise from her peers at every competition for what she can do "with one and a half legs," Mayte will continue "learning to channel the pain" through races. With a painkiller in her pocket and sometimes dragging her left leg, she will continue to overcome each of those wet or cold days that add extra discomfort to her damaged joint.

With the world tour over, Mayte's only remaining option is to rest. Without ever abandoning her training, and more than proud of her performance throughout the year, the Bariloche native will take advantage of her time to participate in some shorter races.

Her three-time championship in the 36km Capri-Naples race capped off her impressive 2025 season , in which she racked up prestigious first-place finishes. With the same ambition as always, she also proposes the possibility of preparing for a future Olympic cycle.

At 27, Mayte Puca continues to pursue activities that will bring her even closer to that healthy limit she's set out to pursue since she was 7, when she began walking a long and arduous journey that she preferred to complete by swimming.