Paratriathlete and Marine Corps veteran Eric McElvenny is preparing for the Paralympics triathlon.In just a few days, he’s heading to Paris and hoping to bring home some hardware. “It’s just the experience. I don't think it could be paralleled,” McElvenny said.McElvenny now lives with his wife and three kids in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, which is about 11 miles outside of Pittsburgh.His journey to becoming a paratriathlete started in 2011, shortly after he was injured in an IED explosion while deployed and lost the lower half of his right leg.“I guess once I accepted the fact that, 'Hey, this is my new normal,' my life changed a little bit. Now, I'm missing a leg, and I'm going to be in the world of prosthetics for the rest of my life. You know, it took two weeks to accept that and then just hop into it, set a goal to start racing,” McElvenny said.His form of rehabilitation was training, which led him to Tokyo where he placed sixth in 2020, and now he’s a couple weeks from jumping in the Seine and going for the gold with his family and doctors there to cheer him on.“We decided as a family that the experience was amazing and we're going to try to go to Paris. So, I put in a hard three years of traveling around the country, racing and qualified to represent team USA in Paris and getting ready to go out and race on Sept. 1,” McElvenny said.Paralympic bronze medalist and veteran Dr. Rory Cooper, of West Deer, Pennsylvania, came to wish McElvenny good luck.Cooper was injured after being run over by a truck while serving in the Army and went on to a medal in wheelchair racing during the 1988 Paralympics in Seoul, South Korea.He’s also heading to Paris as a scientist for the International Paralympic Scientific Task Force.“We look at classification, medical health, we look at the sports performance and coaching, all of those different aspects, how we can make the games better, make the athletes experience better,” Cooper said.McElvenny will compete in the Paralympics on Sept. 1.