Inside the world of Para athlete content creation with Noah Malone

The six-time Paralympic medalist is making waves on and off the track.

By Owen Murray

Noah Malone steps toward the camera.

The six-time Paralympic medalist, sunglasses on, shuffles toward the photographer. His red and white Jordan 4s shine against the lime green carpet. His hands come out of his pockets and to his neck, popping the collar of his pale gray Nike warmup jacket for the picture. The backdrop reads PREFONTAINE CLASSIC in giant white font.

Behind the carpet, Malone’s wife, Olympic rugby medalist Ariana Ramsey, presses record on her phone. The next day, after Noah crosses the finish line at The Prefontaine Classic, they’ll edit that clip into a race day vlog and post it to their more than 100,000 shared Instagram followers.

It’s part of a routine they’ve developed to share their lives with the world in hope of greater awareness.

Later, Malone’s victorious visage will take the place of honor on Hayward Field’s Jumbotron, and he’ll have the platform to address the track and field universe; after that, it’ll be up to him to promote his story.

For now, he turns and walks onto the warmup track.

Malone, 24, is one of the world’s most successful sprinters. Since he debuted for Team USA in 2019, he’s cultivated a career at the top of the track and field world — at places like Hayward Field, the site of today’s meet; and multiple Paralympic Games.

But he’s something else now, too: an international ambassador among a growing crop of Para athletes who’ve become experts by necessity in social media marketing. Malone, among his contributions, has created a series of Instagram videos titled “The Unseen Journey” chronicling his journey toward the Los Angeles Games. When he gets set in his blocks, two hours after the green carpet, it’ll be alongside a field of athletes who’ve done the same in pursuit of exposure and recognition.

“Running fast and winning races — that won’t always cut it,” Malone says. “You have to stand out a certain way.”

That way delivered him back to Eugene for his third Prefontaine Classic, riding on a cloud of victories and a reinvigorated drive to share his life.

Since developing Leber Hereditary Optic Neuropathy, which leads to loss of central vision, at 13 years old, Malone has continually set the track and field world on fire. He debuted on the international stage at 17 years old, when he won gold as part of the Team USA 4x100m team at the World Para Athletics Championships, then qualified to compete in the T12 classification at his first Paralympic Games at Tokyo 2020 while competing for Indiana State University.

Qualification at the Tokyo and Paris Paralympics provided opportunities for Malone to flex his content brain and film his surroundings, but he recommitted to the platform early in 2026. He wanted to explain how he trained and how he saw his sport — literally.

One video he shared in April is a blurred recording of a practice sprint. A gray and red track is discernible under a cloudy blue sky. Malone’s arms pump through the frame.

“So the question I get the most is what exactly do I see being visually impaired?" the caption begins. This is what his eyes give him. In the comments, Malone is answering questions about what color track is the easiest to see lane lines on (“eh it’s kinda all the same tbh”) and responding to compliments.

“That’s what brands like, to be honest,” Malone says. “They want a story. They want to know what makes you stand out. Why are you unique? That’s the main thing, because if they just look at me, I look like a regular runner, but when they know I’m running and I can’t see 10 feet in front of me, then that just changed their whole perspective.”

His perspective shifted, too, after Ramsey had social media success in Paris. She was part of the U.S. women’s rugby team which won bronze at the 2024 Olympics. Before the Games, she had roughly 6,500 followers, but three months of posting later, she neared six figures. Ramsey’s Olympic teammate Ilona Maher has built millions of followers doing the same.

“Organic content is literally something that’s a problem in America,” Ramsey says. “And I was an American girl who didn’t realize it. I think the real world issues are something that people really want to see.”

Some of their videos are self-produced, focused on moments of life which might seem mundane to the Malones but they’ve recognized are exactly what others want to see. Some, like Malone’s four-part series, involve a hired videographer. While Ramsey’s preferred content is organic, iPhone-filmed video, Malone says the outsourced videos are his best.

“There’s no way I could do some of the videos I’ve done just off my iPhone with me editing it,” Malone says. “It’s just investing in the quality you want to put out, which means that takes the time off my shoulders.”

They’re not the only ones doing it.

At the 2019 World Para Athletics Junior Championships in Nottwil, Switzerland, Malone, then 17 years old, met a 14-year-old jumper named Ezra Frech.

“He was still famous then, but he wasn't trying,” Malone says. “He just was Ezra that people knew him for, and then he was just being all organic. He was being himself.”

Frech, now 21 years old and a University of Southern California student-athlete with two Paralympic gold medals and more than 700,000 followers to his name across Instagram and TikTok, has turned early fame into education. He co-starred in “Adaptive”, a three-episode miniseries on Peacock, which he told TrackTown USA last year is a step toward “[rewiring] the way society sees people with disabilities.”

“The older he got, the more he started to compete,” Malone says. “And then he's getting to college, and he's winning gold medals — it just gets bigger.”

Hunter Woodhall, an Paralympic champion T62 (double below-knee amputee with prosthetics) sprinter who creates videos for nearly two million Instagram followers alongside his wife, Olympic champion Tara Davis-Woodhall, lined up with Malone on Saturday.

“I watch all of Noah’s content,” Woodhall says. “I think it’s great. I think anybody who’s pursuing social content and getting their story out there is mutually beneficial. It helps the sport, helps them specifically, brings values to companies and brands. It’s like a high tide — it raises all ships.”

In season, Malone doesn’t want to dedicate all of his time creating videos; winning is still top of his list. This summer, he went from a win at the Los Angeles Grand Prix to Eugene with another in mind. But that January resolution to take it more seriously led to his content expansion, and he’s learning to marry the two together.

When Malone pitched an all-American sprints field to the meet organizers in Eugene, he didn’t just envision Woodhall as a co-star. While two-time Paralympic medalist Blake Leeper (T43; double below-knee amputee) and 2024 Paralympic medalist Korban Best (T47; below-elbow amputation or impairment) are both stars in their own rights, they’re special to Malone because they lined up next to him at his and Ramsey’s wedding in November 2025.

Malone, Best says, was the one of the first Paralympic athletes he met. The two were roommates at Team USA’s Chula Vista Elite Athlete Training Center in January 2024. They met, though, in the team shop.

“I don’t even think he remembers,” Best says.

“You were with your mom!” Malone replies.

A year later, they shared Malone’s wedding stage. Leeper, who starred in Abled, a 2023 Amazon-sponsored documentary centered around his quest to qualify for the 2020 Paralympic Games, was there too. He’s now a motivational speaker alongside his athletics career, and his feed is a mixture of clips of his speaking engagements and social media challenge videos.

When Malone put out the call, they were in. After the race at The Prefontaine Classic, they grinned alongside the best man.

“In the past, we’d get overlooked and nobody would know about us,” Leeper says. “Now that we have social media, we can promote each other, promote ourselves, collaborate and get our stories out there to the world so that we gain more fans — so that people get excited to see us. They get to know our backstories, our families, our wives, our kids, our girlfriends — everything that we do to become a Paralympic athlete, and hopefully we’ll gain fans for life.”

For Malone, the recipe has changed. As he’s risen from collegiate competition to Paralympics, he has adjusted his online style in pursuit of authenticity. That doesn’t mean only explaining what his vision looks like, but it can’t mean omitting it, either.

“It used to be 100% track, 100% athlete, 100% just that,” Malone says. “But then it’s like I’m leaving so much of my story off the table. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable. Sometimes it’s not really the cool thing. But talking about the disability — not many people know. If you go on my Instagram and scroll, you can’t tell, so you have to talk about it and share why I’m a Para athlete.”

When he lined up at Hayward Field, alongside Leeper, Best, Woodhall and five other mixed Para athletes, it meant more. When he ran a joint-season-best 10.54, even though it was tenths off his goal of becoming the first Para athlete to run sub-10 seconds, he raced off into the bend and crowned himself. He took the interview microphone and thanked the crowd for watching.

Days after the meet, Malone’s profile was full of photos of him crossing the finish line. His Jordans on the carpet were there, too. Then there was a series of graphics — quotes from Malone, explaining his story, expressing his hope for more education and awareness.

“You’re an inspiration! My son has his first Para meet Saturday!” a commenter wrote underneath the post.

“let’s goo!” Malone responded.

“When you’re the top of the Para world, more people hear what you’re saying,” Malone says. “I know there’s a ton of people with disabilities who have no idea what Para even is. I didn’t even know when I lost my vision. I do have a responsibility, but I think everyone — every Para athlete — has a responsibility to spread the awareness. It’s nowhere near as big as it could be.”