Like most good things in her life, Beatriz Hatz’s application to Love Island began as little more than a joke.
The 25-year-old Paralympian—who was born without a fibula in her right leg, resulting in an amputation below the knee—had never seen the program before she tuned in after practice one day, lured in at her best friend’s behest.
“She was like, ‘Oh, Bea, what do you think of this?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, bro, I don't know. Why would I ever be in that situation? Like, if a man said this, I would leave,’” Hatz quipped. “She’d be like, ‘No, no, no. He's only one of like five options you have.’”
After a bit of explaining, Hatz found herself falling “deep into the lore” of the show, wherein contestants operate with a different sort of understanding (and different sort of vernacular) than they would in the so-called outside world. She began planning and plotting what she would do if she were in the same predicament as the bikini-clad cast members on her screen. Would she actually tell the bronze-chested man messing with her heart to scram, and risk banishment from the neon pink and yellow villa? Or, like many before her, would she couple up with a bimbo for the sake of survival and a chance at a cash prize? Playfully enticed by the thought (and at least a little motivated by the impact she could have as the show’s first amputee), she threw her hat in the ring.
The situation calls to mind the manner in which her Paralympic career began, which is to say totally casually, and with little to no way of knowing how her life was about to change. As the oldest of three and the only girl in her family, Hatz, a strong-willed Mexican-American, developed an intense competitive streak at an early age. Then, in high school, a friend dangled the title of “most athletic in the group” to whoever could make one varsity track meet as a freshman. Used to one-upping her brothers (or at least attempting to whenever she could), the sports-loving Hatz saw her opportunity and took it. It didn’t matter that she had never run track in her life, or that she had an ill-suited prosthetic weighing her down—she would do it, of course, and she would do it well.
“I went, and I competed,” she said. “I made that varsity track meet, and then the next year I was like, I got to do it again. This was actually really fun. I enjoyed track.”
By 2017, she was representing the U.S. in Switzerland for the World Para Athletics Junior World Championships. And by 2021, she had made her Paralympic debut in Tokyo. Her first go at the podium was unsuccessful—she would finish 5th in her classification for Women’s Long Jump, and sixth in both the Women’s 200M and 100M—but she had better luck at Paris in 2024, when she would snag herself a bronze.
Her triumph was in part made possible by the Challenged Athletes Foundation, which, years before, provided Hatz’s family with a grant to buy a better-suited prosthetic for the burgeoning Para track star. Up to that point, she hadn’t had one specifically for running, and her family’s insurance would only cover one model per year. Otherwise, prostheses are “ridiculously expensive,” she said.
These days, Hatz has “different prosthetics for different things,” like wearing high heels, sprinting, long jumping, or even swimming. But it was the leg from CAF that she would use to compete in Switzerland, where she would win three medals and effectively launch her Paralympic career.
Navigating the Love Island villa was a different kind of challenge.
Hatz prefers not to show her bare limb to anyone, let alone to millions of viewers on Peacock, but privacy is essentially non-existent for islanders. Getting around this meant taking her prosthetic off under the covers when she went to bed, or covering her leg with a towel when switching into her blade for outdoor workouts.
“I did end up like showing some of the Islanders my long jump blade and kind of teaching them about it,” she said. “And I thought that was probably one of the coolest experiences I had in there.”
Back before she applied, Hatz found it ludicrous how attached islanders would grow after just a few days—maybe weeks—together. Now, having lived through it, she maintained that the nonstop and forced proximity really does amplify feelings, both platonic and personal.
“People don't realize the fact that we don't have anything else to, like, distract ourselves,” she explained. “We don't have a phone. We don't know what time it is. We don't really know anything that's going on in the outside world. We only have this person to focus on.”
Sleeping next to one another, kissing friends in challenges, navigating the “bombshells” who, every so often, enter the villa to test bonds and cause drama … all of those producer-led ploys genuinely serve to intensify an already emotional experience.
“And it’s not even just the romantic connections,” Hatz continued, “but I would argue that the friendships get very deep in there, as well.”
Having previously performed on a global stage, the bronze medalist agreed that she is uniquely positioned to handle both the hate and the adoration that comes from an opportunity like Love Island, even with her early exit. Most islanders are plucked from relative obscurity before their lives are altered in six short weeks, when their social followings suddenly balloon and newfound branded opportunities abound. But Hatz, meanwhile, already had an international profile when she entered the villa. She was already a Nike-sponsored athlete. She had already spent a lifetime contending with ableism around her limb difference, which meant there was little a stranger online could say to hurt her spirit.
And even now, well over a month after her final episode, she is choosing to focus on the good.
“My messages are flooded with, ‘Hey, I'm an amputee. You gave me so much confidence,’” she recounted of the public’s post-show embrace. “I've also gotten messages from girls saying, ‘Hey, that conversation you had, where you opened up and said that because you are a female athlete, you have not felt the most feminine, I feel that. I'm so glad that you had that conversation because I feel that too.’”
“That is something that I hold so deeply to my heart … because it's just so beautiful to see that I can represent multiple communities. People know that you are multifaceted, and you are loved by many different people. And that's what's really cool.”
Next up for the Colorado native will be the show’s Season 8 reunion, scheduled to drop on Peacock at 9 p.m. ET on Monday, Aug. 31 (fun fact: Hatz originally applied to be on Season 7, but wasn’t selected). After that, though, she’ll have her sights set on the L.A. Olympics, where she hopes to once again compete for Team USA, and simultaneously lure some villa-obsessed viewers into following her journey on the track, too.
“I think a lot of people will now have eyes on the Paralympics,” she said. “That's something that is really important to me. I want to continue to grow the movement.”
