What do you do when your life’s passion becomes your greatest obstacle and fear? I would have preferred to find out in a different way, but the conditions for personal discovery aren’t always within our control. Eighteen years ago, in one single turn, I went from being an up-and-coming junior ski racer to a paraplegic. Skiing, which had been my passion, suddenly transformed my life and became my greatest challenge—both physically and mentally. If I wanted to regain my love of the sport, I’d have to confront that challenge.
Adaptive Skiing Too Difficult
While in the rehabilitation hospital, I was told I could ski again . . . if I so desired. They told me about adaptive skiing, touched on the basics of the mono-ski, and informed me that I might even be able to race again. Instantly, I rejected the thought of descending a snowy slope by any other means than standing up on two skis as I always had. Doing it any other way was just too painful to contemplate.
Yet when the next ski season came around and all my friends and family were out playing on the mountain, I began to realize how much I missed being there. Since the age of 7, all I’d ever known on winter weekends was heading to the top of the mountain, flying down the runs with the wind on my face, and feeling perfectly free. As memories of a lifetime of skiing flooded over me, I concluded that this was one aspect of my past I simply couldn’t let go of. I needed to be back out there on the slopes, any way possible.
Having been a ski racer nearly all my life, I (and everyone else who knew me) thought I would pick up the skills and tactics of mono-skiing easily. After all, I already knew the finer points of angulating, weighting and unweighting a ski, and carving a turn, so we all figured I’d be a fast learner. The head coach of the U.S. Disabled Ski Team must have thought so too, because he came up to me and gave me his business card, telling me to give him a call if I was interested in racing. He must have been going on reputation, because I didn’t exactly show a lot of promise early on.
Not a Natural on the Mono-ski
You see, my actual experience of learning to mono-ski was anything but easy. (I now joke with new students that if I could learn to mono-ski, anyone can.) In those first years back on snow, my progress was agonizingly slow for a variety of reasons. I knew that learning to mono-ski would be physically challenging because, as a complete T5/6 paraplegic, I had no functioning abdominal muscles and limited back muscles. But I didn’t realize how mentally tough it would be. As my reintroduction to skiing unfolded, I found myself immersed in several emotional challenges—everything from nervous anticipation and frustration to downright fear. After all, I knew firsthand how dangerous the sport could be!
That first week of lessons was a real eye opener on many levels. Being back on the slopes felt terrific, yet it was also very unnerving. I didn’t know what to expect from mono-skiing. Would it feel the same as skiing had before? Would I find that same thrill and enjoyment I had grown to love? The one thing I noticed right away was that the mountain no longer offered me that freedom and independence it once had. Now I needed lots of help, even for such a simple thing as getting to the chairlift. Learning how to accept help was one of the hardest aspects of getting back on the mountain.
While my loss of independence was frustrating, I was also confronted with the task of being a complete beginner again. Even though I was excited to be back on the slopes, I wasn’t really ready for the emotional challenge of relearning to ski. Never having been a very patient person, both my instructors and I had the formidable task of getting me to slow down and let go of my personal expectations. Eventually I discovered that I had to change my outlook and view mono-skiing as an entirely new sport, one with which I had no history.
While my frustration ran high, it wasn’t my only emotional barrier to success. From the comfort and safety of my home a return to the slopes seemed like a good idea, but when I actually started taking mono-ski lessons I was startled to find that I now had an enormous fear of skiing. Before my accident, it had never occurred to me that skiing could be dangerous. Sure I knew it was possible to break a bone or blow out a knee (and in fact I suffered a knee injury and underwent surgery and rehab when I was 15), but I didn’t think anything more serious and life threatening could happen—and it surely couldn’t happen to me. After all, I was a talented, invincible 16 year old.
Yet by the time I decided to start mono-skiing, I knew the inherent risk of skiing. I understood all too well what could happen on the mountain—and it terrified me. Every day as I got into my mono-ski, that knowledge would seep into my consciousness and soon consume my thoughts. At the top of a run I would look to the bottom, paranoid that I was going to slide all the way down. Runs that had been easy for me were now petrifying; they looked so much steeper than they did before. And the fear would mount whenever I found myself on a crowded run where people were whizzing past. I would become so tense and nervous that all I could do successfully was fall.
The frustration that resulted from the fear of injury and the stress of knowing I wasn’t learning this sport as fast as I thought I should led to many tenuous situations. Insistent that I would ski the real mountain I’d ditch the bunny slope and inevitably get in over my head on terrain that was beyond my ability level. That would just fuel my frustration and end badly, usually with a toboggan ride down the mountain. In fact, I had to be taken off the mountain in a toboggan so many times that the ski patrol stopped strapping me down and let me sit up and enjoy the ride, the one joyful part of my adventure.
Despite my numerous crashes, I never had a major accident while learning to mono-ski. The real trauma had to do with the emotional challenges that often prevented me from getting down the mountain. I would find myself sliding through a turn and instantly freeze, forgetting all the skills I’d been taught, fearful that my next fall would lead to another tragedy.
The Right Adaptive Equipment
Then, after spending years trying to overcome the psychological hurdles of getting back into the sport, I met a wonderful instructor who helped me realize that some of my fear could be alleviated by using equipment that was better suited for my particular disability. He explained that if I felt more secure concerning my mono-ski and its effectiveness on the hill, I’d probably also have more faith in my turns.
The equipment challenge—finding the right equipment or custom-fitting existing gear to enhance performance—is a key element of the adaptive skiing experience, but I’ll save a full discussion of that topic for a future article. In brief, the first thing my instructor did was get me into a different mono-ski seat that provided more trunk support and stability. He even helped me make a foam-fitted insert for the bucket. Through this process, I learned the importance of a kidney belt, a form of chest strap, one small addition to my mono-ski that made a world of change.
The strategy worked. Once we got my equipment to help rather than hinder progress, many of my other challenges began to fade away. I still had the fear of hurting myself while skiing, but no longer was it always the first thing I thought about. Now that I could trust my equipment to work for me, my confidence grew. When I would get to a run that intimidated me or made me nervous, my instructor would have me focus on one turn at a time; he didn’t allow me to think about the whole, long run or the possibility of sliding all the way down the slope. Before I knew it, I was at the bottom looking up at what I had accomplished.
After what felt like forever, I was finally mono-skiing independently; I was improving and linking turns. I will never forget the thrilling sensation of the first mono-ski turn in which I got the full “zing” out of the ski. It felt just as exhilarating as those turns I’d made as a young ski racer. At that moment I recalled something my father had told me when I was in the rehabilitation hospital. He said that when a person makes a great turn on skis it’s not the feet and legs that feel the thrill of the turn, it’s in the mind. Instantly I understood what he meant. I had felt that same thrill. I was finally a skier again!
Now a Paralympian
Now after a successful career mono-ski racing on the U.S. Disabled Ski Team, competing in two Paralympic games and winning numerous ski racing titles and medals, I can honestly say I am a skier! While I don’t think I will ever feel as comfortable or relaxed in a mono-ski as I felt on two skis, my mono-skiing accomplishments are much more rewarding than any success I’d had as a junior ski racer. Never before had I worked or challenged myself, both physically and mentally, as much as when I was learning to mono-ski.
Gaining new confidence, acquiring mono-ski skills, and overcoming my fears of skiing have been part of a long and challenging journey. But it was the journey to become a skier again that taught me I was still a complete and whole person, that my disability didn’t limit or diminish me. If anything, it strengthened and empowered me to find my inner power I hadn’t known existed until challenged. Now, when I feel the wind on my face as I fly down a run, zooming past other skiers, I am so very thankful that I never gave up and so happy to have my passion for skiing back.
Some things never change, after all. I am a skier!
See Related Articles
Discover how adaptive skiing got its start, in From Rehab Tool to Elite Sport: A History of Disabled Skiing.
See Paralympian Creates Monoskis for People with Disabilities to discover an athlete with a SCI changing the face of adaptive equipment for snow sports.
