Olympic skier overcomes illness to compete for Puerto Rico

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For a teenager whose chances of survival were slim when he was born, just making it to the starting line at the Olympics is a miraculous achievement in itself.

William Flaherty will ski for Puerto Rico on Sunday in the giant slalom at the Beijing Games. Although winning a medal is not really within his reach, his health and his studies are.

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Flaherty was born in Cincinnati and moved to Puerto Rico when he was 6. He was diagnosed with hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis when he was 3. Known as HLH, it’s an often fatal disease where the immune system attacks the body’s organs.

"We asked, ‘On a scale of 1 to 10, and 1 is you’re super healthy and 10, you’re dead, where is William?’" said Ann Flaherty, William’s mother. "And they gave him a 9.5. And that hit us in the gut.

"There were days we didn’t know if he would live through the day," she said. "I’ll never forget holding my child and not knowing if he was going to live."

The 17-year-old Flaherty has had more than 30 operations in his life, including a bone marrow transplant from his older brother Charles — himself a former Olympic skier. After the Beijing Games, Flaherty will have an operation to have part of his fibula removed and molded into a new jawbone.

"It’s just about every two years something annoying comes up," said Flaherty, pointing out a scar on the right side of his face where he had a tumor removed two years ago.

Flaherty said even a cold can lay him up for two weeks, so he took extra precautions over the last two years amid the coronavirus pandemic. He spent more than a year in what he dubbed "super quarantine."

Kellie Delka and