Recent dental school grad Leo Merle to compete in 2024 Paralympics in Paris8 min read

Ann Arbor, Mich., July 24, 2024 – Leo Merle, a 2024 graduate of the University of Michigan School of Dentistry, is heading to Paris as a member of the U.S. Paralympic Track & Field Team that will compete against athletes from around the world.

Merle, who specializes in the 1,500-meter run, was named to the 2024 team Sunday at the completion of the Paralympic Team Trials in Miramar, Florida. His event is the 1,500-meter run.

The Paralympics are held in Paris from Aug. 27 to Sept. 8, immediately following the Olympics in many of the same stadiums and venues that the Olympic athletes will compete in starting this week. The finals of Merle’s event will be Sept. 7 and there may be a qualifying run the previous day, depending on the number of athletes in his classification who arrive from the many participating countries.

Merle learned of his selection Sunday morning at a private meeting of the para athletes who participated in the trials, then he participated later in the morning at a celebratory public announcement ceremony. Against a background of loud music and raucous cheering, each team member was handed an oversized “Ticket Punched” card with their name on it to symbolize that they had gained admission to the Paralympics.

“It’s a surreal feeling – that’s the best way to describe it,” Merle said.

Since joining para athletic competitions four years ago, Merle has been steadily moving up in the U.S. rankings for the 1,500 meters by competing in various qualifying events. Immediately after graduating from the dental school in May, he flew to Kobe, Japan, to compete in the 2024 Para Athletics World Championships. He also competed in the 2023 Para Athletics World Championships in Paris last summer, then in November 2023 he won the 1,500 at the 2023 Parapan American Games in Santiago, Chile. For several months in the last year, Merle was the U.S. record-holder for para athletes in the 1,500-meter run.

“It’s just been one thing after another as things happened,” he said of his steady ascension to the U.S. team. “You finish dental school, that was exciting. You go to the World Championships, that was exciting. And then you find out you are representing the United States at a four-year celebration of all things competition. I don’t even know how to describe it.”

Merle competes in a para track category called Class T38, which includes athletes with limitations of movement in their legs and lower torso, many of whom, like Merle, have disabilities caused by cerebral palsy.

Merle was born with a form of cerebral palsy that affects flexibility in his right foot and leg. From the time he was a baby until he was six years old, he wore a corrective boot designed to stretch the tendons of his right leg so they would develop properly and maintain their flexibility. To stay active, he participated in athletics as a child and was an average runner on his high school and college track teams. He didn’t discover para athletics until his junior year of college. He learned that the international para athletic movement has a wide range of categories for athletes with physical limitations, including those with cerebral palsy.

Para athletics has grown in widespread recognition in recent years thanks in large part to television coverage of the Paralympics that now immediately follow the Olympic Games every four years. The most prominent para athletes are those who compete in wheelchairs or amputees who run with prosthetic “blades” for sprints and longer races. However, para athletics offers many categories for athletes with a wide range of disabilities, including those with cerebral palsy, spinal injuries, visual impairments and intellectual disabilities.

In the U.S. Paralympic Team Trials in Florida last weekend, Merle just missed setting a new personal best time. The 1,500 is just short of four laps of a 400-meter track and the top para athletes finish in slightly more than 4 minutes. Merle finished second in his classification with a time of 4:06.47, just above his personal best of 4:06.30 that was the U.S. record for part of the last year.

The make-up of the Paralympic team is based on factors beyond just the fastest times or the winning distances of the competitors in various events, including how they’ve fared in other international competitions. Merle’s success and consistency in the recent World Championships and PanAm games are likely to have helped his standing with the selection committee, which is also able to award several discretionary spots on the team.

Since Merle entered Para Athletic competitions more than four years ago, his early success led him to set his sights on the Paris Paralympics this summer. That athletic goal meant he put his dentistry career into pause mode, even as he finished dental school and graduated in early May. While many of his classmates were securing dentistry jobs even before graduation, Merle was in no rush because he knew he would need time to continue his training runs, then travel to Japan for the World Championships, then continue training for the U.S. team trials in Florida last weekend. Now that he has made the U.S. team, for the next month and a half his focus will remain on training and then traveling to Paris to compete on the world stage.

Merle said stalling his dentistry career was a difficult decision, but making the U.S. team confirms it was the right decision. “I don’t know if I will ever have another opportunity like the one that’s been presented to me to just fully train and fully submit myself to the Paralympics process,” he said. “I wanted to give myself the best opportunity to not only make the team, but also to perform well in Paris if I made the team. That was all really important to me. So I decided we’ll leave the dentistry on hold for a little bit, so that I can focus on this. This is a great result. It is exactly what I wanted, so knowing that I got the result that I wanted validates the decision to take a pause from my dentistry career.”

He will spend the next month on training runs around Ann Arbor, both solo and with a group of friends in a local running club. A favorite route is on the Border-to-Border Trail along the Huron River. While he runs he’ll be thinking not just about Paris, but also a couple of next-step career options; he’s considering a private practice job in San Diego, California, and he has been invited to interview for a resident position in the graduate endodontics program at the U-M dental school, which means he would stay at the dental school for three more years.

In the meantime, the rush of exhilaration from the announcement ceremony on Sunday hasn’t yet faded for Merle. “It was a huge celebration, music, fanfare. Pure excitement. Everyone’s clapping, a lot of fist pumps, a lot of screaming ‘Let’s go!’ When I was announced, a lot of my teammates that I’ve known for a couple of years knew I had finished dental school, so they are screaming ‘He’s a doctor, yeah!’”

And also now a Paralympian headed to the 2024 Games in Paris.

_________________________

See related stories from the School of Dentistry website:

• A Student Profile of Leo Merle from Aug. 14, 2023, with details of his journey into the national para athletics competitions and his experience as a student at the School of Dentistry.

• A Dec. 12, 2023, article about Merle winning a gold medal at the 2023 Parapan American Games in Santiago, Chile.

###

The University of Michigan School of Dentistry is one of the nation’s leading dental schools engaged in oral healthcare education, research, patient care and community service.  General dental care clinics and specialty clinics providing advanced treatment enable the school to offer dental services and programs to patients throughout Michigan.  Classroom and clinic instruction prepare future dentists, dental specialists and dental hygienists for practice in private offices, hospitals, academia and public agencies.  Research seeks to discover and apply new knowledge that can help patients worldwide.  For more information about the School of Dentistry, visit us on the Web at: www.dent.umich.edu.  Contact: Lynn Monson, associate director of communications, at [email protected], or (734) 615-1971.