A woman and her son who were once homeless have made it to the 2024 Paris Olympics, where she will be rooting for him as he competes in the 10-kilometer marathon swim event this week….See more

A woman and her son who were once homeless have made it to the 2024 Paris Olympics, where she will be rooting for him as he competes in the 10-kilometer marathon swim event this week, representing Team USA.

“It was a ‘we’ effort … there’s so many people involved [along] the way, and she’s at the front of that freaking list,” 23-year-old marathon swimmer Ivan Puskovitch told “Good Morning America” of having his mom Robyn Rabinovitch’s support throughout his journey to the Olympics.

The mother and son’s story went viral after family members started an online crowdfunding campaign to help fund Rabinovitch’s trip to Paris to see her son compete in the event on Aug. 9.

“I think she deserves to see the race,” Puskovitch said. “[She] is the most deserving of being able to see the culmination of all that sacrifice.”

Puskovitch always excelled in school and in the pool, according to his mother, who was his primary swimming coach until he turned 13.

By age 7, he had swum a 500-yard freestyle race, and by age of 10, he had broken the national age group record in the event, according to his Team USA profile.

Despite the family facing financial challenges, Rabinovitch said she sent Puskovitch to a private school to support his swimming training after he began to make a name for himself among kids his age.

“For me, it was worth whatever I was going to have to deal with to make that happen, because he was really happy with his swim,” she said.

In 2017, when Puskovitch was in high school, Rabinovitch said she woke up without vision in her right eye, and the financial fallout left the family homeless.

“My life just kind of imploded that summer,” she recalled, sharing that there was a point that she had to make choices between feeding her kids and paying for her