Ritva Nikkilä

Ritva Nikkilä

Personal information
Born	1961 (age 62–63) Savitaipale, Finland
Sport
Country	Finland
Sport	Paralympic swimming
Disability	Dysmelia
Disability class	S5
Retired	1993
Medal record Paralympic swimming Representing Finland Paralympic Games 1988 Seoul 50m backstroke L2 1988 Seoul 100m freestyle L2 1992 Barcelona 50m backstroke S5 1988 Seoul 50m freestyle L2

Ritva Nikkilä (born 1961) is a Finnish retired Paralympic swimmer who competed at international swimming competitions. She was a Paralympic champion and competed at the 1988 and 1992 Summer Paralympics.

Personal life

Nikkilä was born in 1961 in a small family farm in Savitaipale, South Karelia, she was the middle child of five children: she grew up with four brothers, two older and two younger. She was born with two fingers on each hand and her right leg is shorter than her left leg. She underwent twenty corrective surgeries on her lower and upper limbs to improve mobility, she had a prosthetic limb when she was three years old. While living in a house in the countryside, she followed her brothers' footsteps and they all learned to swim at a nearby beach, Ritva became very attached to swimming from a young age. As well as swimming, she learned to knit and crochet at school.

Swimming career

Nikkilä began to swim competitively at the age of nineteen, she participated at the 1988 Summer Paralympics in her twenties and won a gold medal in the backstroke and silver and bronze medals in the freestyle. She then won a silver medal at the 1992 Summer Paralympics, after which she stopped competitive swimming to focus on studying social care at University of Kuopio.