Tag: Sit Ski

Former Swimmer Kendall Gretsch on Unexpected Paralympic Golds, Hunger for More

Kendall Gretsch (r) and Oksana Masters at the 2018 Paralympics medal ceremony for the women’s sitting 6 k biathlon sprint after Gretsch won gold and Masters claimed silver on the first day of competition in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics/Joe Kusumoto)

As a sophomore at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, Kendall Gretsch stumbled across an article that would change her life. It was the spring of 2012, just a few months before the Summer Paralympics in London.

Gretsch had been reading the local news when she came across a story about a St. Louis college student who hoped to attend the London Games as part of the U.S. Paralympics Swimming team.

Born with spina bifida, Gretsch had been a swimmer in high school. After graduating in 2010, she enrolled at Washington University with the intent of studying biomedical engineering and no plans to swim collegiately.

However, within the first few months of her freshman year, she missed the athletic outlet. She began to swim and exercise on her own. By the time she came across the aforementioned article about a year later, she was ready to jump back into the pool, struck by the idea of pursuing the Paralympic dream.

“I was just so oblivious to any sort of para-sport,” Gretsch, 26, reflected on the phone earlier this summer, noting that she had not really thought of the Paralympics as “an option” for continuing her athletic career until reading the piece.

Competing at the Paralympics quickly became her goal, but it wasn’t limited to swimming.

Kendall Gretsch is a three-time world champion in the women’s paratriathlon PT1 classification. (Photo: IPC)

“In high school, I just liked being a part of the team and the social aspect of [swimming], the sport elements of being able to push yourself and set your own individual goals,” said Gretsch, a native of Downers Grove, Illinois.

Following her sophomore year of college, Gretsch returned to Illinois in search of an adaptive sports program to join. What she found was Dare2Tri. Based out of Chicago, the Dare2Tri program offered swim sessions, and Gretsch made it out for the final swim practice of the season. After getting out of the pool, she was approached by one of the instructors. Would she be interested in stepping outside and trying her luck on the track?

“She had me come right out after the swim practice and try racing wheelchair,” Gretsch recalled. “I ended up doing my first triathlon race that summer.”

After graduating in college in 2014, she competed in her first international race and started focusing solely on paratriathlon. At 2014 world championships, she won gold in the PT1 classification and was later awarded 2014 Female Para Triathlete of the Year by USA Triathlon.

In 2015, Gretsch won another World Championship paratriathlon title and was also nominated for an ESPY Best Female Athlete with a Disability award. (She would earn a third World Championship title in 2016.)

World Championships and awards aside, the Paralympics were still on Gretsch’s radar in the spring of 2016. Her chance seemed forthcoming. The 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, would be the first in history to feature paratriathlon. However, the PT1, Gretsch’s class, was not to be contested for women.

If she wanted to compete at the Paralympics, she would have to wait and see if her classification would be included at the 2020 Summer Paralympic Games in Tokyo or turn her attention elsewhere. But where to go?

During her first year with Dare2Tri, she had heard about adaptive cross-country skiing.

“Someone I had met through triathlon mentioned to me in passing, ‘Hey, there’s this group up in Madison, [Wisconsin], they do adaptive nordic skiing, you should check it out sometime,’” Gretsch explained. “So nordic skiing was in the back of my mind [leading up to Rio].”

She decided to give nordic skiing a go. She moved to Madison and took a technical-support job with an electronic health records company, Epic Systems, while training in an effort to make the 2018 Winter Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea.

“Maybe it’s just because I had a background in swimming that I felt like triathlon came a little bit more naturally,” Gretsch said of her transition to nordic. “The hardest part about learning to nordic ski was definitely the maneuvering. In nordic, when you’re in a sit ski, your skis are fixed together, straight. When you’re maneuvering around a corner, you can’t just pick up your foot and step around a corner, like you would if you were standing. So learning how to maneuver was really fun and challenging. We spent a long time on that in practice.”

Kendall Gretsch takes aim during the women’s 6-kilometer sitting biathlon at the 2018 Paralympic Winter Games on Saturday in PyeongChang, South Korea. She won the race to become the first American woman to medal in a biathlon event at the Paralympics (or Olympics). (Photo: US Paralympics/Mark Reis)

Beyond the challenge of learning a new sport, Gretsch also bumped up against a lack of snow during her first season as a cross-country skier.

“I would travel every weekend to find snow,” Gretsch said of her first winter in Wisconsin. “In Madison, there wasn’t really any snow, so during the week I wasn’t really skiing that much at all. I was just sort of skiing during the weekends and then as much as I could during the week.”

Gretsch remained in Madison through the winter and into the summer. A little less than a year out from the 2018 Paralympics, she turned her attention completely to skiing, putting paratriathlon on hold. Four months prior to the Games, she moved Bozeman, Montana, to train with the U.S. Paralympics Nordic team and then-head coach Eileen Carey (Carey recently became the director of U.S. Paralympics Nordic).

By the time the Winter Paralympics rolled around, Gretsch had a full year of nordic training under her belt. Still, what came in South Korea was slightly unexpected.

American Kendall Gretsch (l) racing in the 4 x 2.5 k mixed relay at the 2018 Paralympic Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea. Her team finished seventh. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics/Mark Reis)

In the opening event of the Games, Gretsch became the first American to take home a gold medal in Paralympic biathlon by winning the 6-kilometer sitting sprint. One day later, she won a second gold medal in the 12 k sitting cross-country distance race.

“A lot of times — this probably sounds really terrible — I feel like in triathlon, people are waiting for me to fail,” Gretsch said. “Whereas in a new sport, you have your own personal expectations of how things should go, but no one else really has those expectations for you. You don’t have a target on your back. So there’s a lot of freedom with that.”

With two Paralympic gold medals to her name, Gretsch plans to continue cross-country skiing. She also hopes that her classification will eventually be included in the Summer Paralympics so that she may become a Paralympic triathlete as well.

“I think we’ll know by the end of this year whether or not my classification will be in Tokyo for triathlon,” she said. “So the plan right now is to do both.”

And for someone as strong and talented as Gretsch, more medals from both sports is not out of the question.

“It’s a very humbling experience being able to hear your anthem,” Gretsch said, according to a U.S. Paralympics Nordic press release after her second gold medal in PyeongChang. “Puts everything into perspective. Knowing that you’re here not just here for yourself but for your country.”

September 11, 2018
Norwegian Start-up Rethinks Dryland Sit-Ski

A group of five Norwegian students updated the dryland sit ski: on display is the Exero Spike prototype. (Photo: Exero Technologies)

There are ah-ha moments when an idea comes — poof — out of thin air. Then there are blunt-force type ideas, when reworking, redirecting and reconfiguring brings about the desired outcome. For five students from Norway who recently formed a start-up called Exero Technologies, there’s been a mix of ah-ha and continual reconfiguring.

The group of five Norwegians, all studying at NTNU in Trondheim, includes mechanical engineers and a civil engineer with a business background, are developing a new dryland specific sit-ski. NTNU’s Business School is part of the Norway Entrepreneurship Program (NEP), which is based at the University of Oslo. A unique aspect of the program sends approximately 150 NEP students to the United States for 10 weeks during the summer.

That’s how Nicoline Bergh, Bendik Fon and Solveig Christensen, three of the five founders of Exero Technologies, found themselves on their 10-week immersion at the Boston University (BU) Questrom School of Business. Bergh described BU as ideal for refining the group’s pitch and exposing their product to new user groups.

From left to right: Solveig Christensen, Nicoline Bergh, Espen Aksnes, Mathias Berg, and Bendik Fon after the Wings for Life Run in Stavanger, Norway on May 7, 2017. (Photo: Exero Technologies)

As part of NTNU’s course requirements, students must start a business.

“This project started one year ago when the three guys on our team, they studied mechanical engineering, and they began production,” Bergh said. “Initially, the mechanical engineers in the group were given a problem that was looking for new solutions: how to win more medals in the Paralympics. They were looking for new solutions to improve athlete performance … the problem was to make a new solution for the cross-country sit-ski.”

The on-snow XC sit-ski is simple yet functional. Most often the frame is aluminum or a composite with a pair of skate skis attached to the base. The athlete sits in an affixed molded seat. Forward movement is strictly a double-poling affair. Basic, light and minimalist — on-snow sit-skis have no steering or braking mechanism. In the racing scene, they are built for speed.

Like their able-bodied counterparts, para athletes train in the offseason. That requires specialized equipment. Mountain boards, a wider and longer version of their skateboard park cousins, have been the go-to platform for dryland sit-skiing.

Colette Bourgonje doing some mountain-board sit-skiing during a Canadian Para-Nordic Team training camp in Arizona in 2012. (Photo: Robin McKeever)

Mountain boards feature pneumatic tires, beefier and stiffer trucks, and in some cases a hand-operated caliper brake. A molded seat is bolted to the board. And because of the single pivots on the front and rear trucks, athletes can steer by leaning their torso.

Those modified mountain boards are a manifestation of making the best with what’s available off the shelf.

That’s where Bergh says her team’s product, the Exero Spike, will make a difference. Bergh calls the Exero Spike the “total solution”. In other words, adaptive athletes will have more steering control, comfort, off- and on-road functionality, and hand-operated front-wheel disc brakes. All that amounts to better stability and possibly a potentially bigger user group, she asserted.

Beyond the one-off mountain boards made for adaptive athletes, Bergh explained that none of the comparable products in the marketplace are best serving those adaptive athletes wanting a more fluid exercise experience.

U.S. Paralympics Nordic national-team member Andy Soule works on shooting at the Mt. Van Hoevenberg biathlon range during time-trial intervals on sit-ski mountain boards in September 2012.

“Products used today are mostly hand bikes and 3 wheel wheelchairs,” Bergh wrote in an email. “The handbike is both big and heavy and often difficult to manage on your own. With a 3 wheel chair, it is difficult to both steer and make progress at the same time, as you have to use a steering wheel to change direction, forcing you to stop making forward movement at the same time.”

Bergh envisions a market for the Exero Spike well beyond adaptive snow and dryland sit-skiers.

“So far, we have looked at people with spinal-cord injuries, amputees, cerebral palsy, polio, or other muscle diseases as our primary segment,” Berg emailed. “These also the segments that we are focusing on and see as the potential users. But, as we are developing a summer sports equipment, we see that the sled we are developing can be used for more than just cross country summer training. We’ve been testing with sledge hockey players and rowers, and we’ve got the impression that the movements they’re used to are quite similar to the sled we are developing.”

Bergh and her partners foresee approximately 50,000 potential users in Scandinavia (12,000 of whom reside in Norway), and two million potential users in the U.S.

Perhaps those numbers look inflated. As medical costs increase, in cases where more exercise correlates with smaller health bills in the long term, tools like the Spike, making outdoor exercise more accessible, may make sense. According to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates, 2.2 million people in the U.S. depend on wheelchairs for mobility. Another 6.5 million require a cane, walker or crutches.

“We want to make a product, that is both fun to use, beneficial in terms of health and that looks cool,” Bergh wrote. “We want to make a product for people with disabilities that don’t have the same options to do exercising as you and me. Also, focusing on design and making a cool product, it will differ from many of the alternatives today.”

Exero Technologies remains in start-up mode. Bergh said the group has no firm price set for their initial model, which they plan to release in a year.

“The longtime goal is to make several products, making a portfolio,” Bergh wrote. “By now, we’re starting out with the current product and will develop a sled for those who need their legs straight out. I think we will wait for the users’ feedback on the first product, and then decide whether we should experiment with different materials.”

On Sept. 7, Norway’s Spare Bank 1 announced Exero Technologies had won its business innovation competition: Exero Technologies was awarded 250,000 Norwegian Krone (almost $32,000 U.S. dollars).

https://www.instagram.com/p/BYyUG7lDu05/?taken-by=exero_technologies

September 26, 2017
FasterSkier’s Para-Nordic Skiers of 2015: Andy Soule and Oksana Masters

Andy Soule (l) and Oksana Masters, both of U.S. Paralympics Nordic, are FasterSkier’s 2015 Para-Nordic Skiers of the Year.

Andy Soule

When you become the first American to rack up five medals in six individual events at World Championships, you’re essentially a shoo-in for Para-Nordic Skier of the Year. Andy Soule, a U.S. Army veteran and sit skier, did just that at the 2015 International Paralympic Committee (IPC) World Championships in January in Cable, Wis., taking silver in two biathlon events and the 10-kilometer cross-country race plus bronze in the cross-country 15 k and sprint.

Andy Soule and his hardware from 2015 IPC World Championships: five medals with three silvers and two bronze. (Photo: James Netz)

“After the second podium, I just started feeling like that wasn’t a fluke,” Soule said in February. “This isn’t just a one-time thing … I can come out and compete on a level with the top guys every day. It was a confidence builder as well when you have that feeling.”

In his eighth year on the U.S. Paralympics Nordic Team, Soule, 35, was named IPC’s January athlete of the month. After World Championships, he improved to third overall in the World Cup and finished the season first overall in the cross-country standings.

“It is a great feeling and a great finish to the season,” he said at World Cup Finals in Surnadal, Norway.

In all, Soule tallied four World Cup golds — all of which came in Asahikawa, Japan — and a bronze during the 2014/2015 season.

And all the success has led him to commit to another three seasons leading up to the 2018 Paralympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. According to his teammate, Dan Cnossen, Soule considered retiring after 2013/2014.

“I’m right at that age and I’m right at the point in my career where I’m in the prime of real top-performance potential,” Soule said. “I feel really great about what I have going forward and that I’ll be able to build on it and still improve on it.”

Oksana Masters

It got even better for U.S. Paralympics as Oksana Masters, another sit skier, also rose to the top of the 2014/2015 World Cup cross-country podium in her second year on the team.

Oksana Masters (U.S. Paralympics Nordic) in a biathlon competition at 2015 IPC World Cup Finals in Surnadal, Norway. Masters won the 5 k cross-country sitting to clinch the overall World Cup cross-country title for 2014/2015. (Photo: IPC Nordic Skiing/Facebook)

A rowing convert, Masters, 25, earned two cross-country medals at 2015 World Championships — silver in the middle distance and bronze in the sprint — and won four out of five races in Japan this year. That put her on top of the IPC overall and she ended the season in first with a total of seven individual World Cup golds and two silvers.

“I respect my competition, of the years they put in to be where they are now,” Masters said in February. “I’m playing catchup and I’m just doing what I can and focusing on myself. It just so happens to be putting me much higher than I ever could imagine being.”

She explained that it took her 13 years to reach the Paralympic podium in rowing (she earned bronze in the double scull in 2012) and was humble about the strides she had made in skiing since starting the sport a year and a half ago.

A silver and bronze medalist at the 2014 Winter Paralympics, Masters committed to skiing full time last spring, partially to alleviate a past rowing injury in her back. A training crash leading up to 2015 U.S. nationals re-aggravated the injury, forcing her to sit out the week.

A week before World Championships, she got back on snow while fighting bronchitis and walking pneumonia.

“World Championships was just more of a mental battle than … just a battle for getting medals, with one setback after another,” Masters said. “I didn’t really have much expectations for myself … so [I was] just basically trying to survive at that point.”

The bronze medal she earned in Cable, her first of World Championships, brought her some serious relief.

“[It] also just brought my focus more towards, OK, I had setbacks, but I still can be within the competition and hang with the field, so just believe in the previous training that I’ve done and what I do know and just do it,” she said.

Masters made the nomination list for IPC athlete of the month in February.

Honorable mentions:

Brittany Hudak

Brittany Hudak (Canadian Para-Nordic Ski Team) at 2015 IPC World Cup Finals in Surnadal, Norway. Hudak won the 2014/2015 World Cup Overall Cross-Country title. (Photo: IPC Nordic Skiing/Facebook)

The Canadian Para Nordic Ski Team had a banner season as well, with standing skier Brittany Hudak topping the overall World Cup cross-country podium in her first year on the development team.

“The learning curve has been so huge for me,” Hudak, 21, said in a team press release after winning two consecutive races in Asahikawa.

At the following World Cup Finals, she collected three medals: silver in the 15 k cross-country, silver in the 12.5 k biathlon and bronze in the 6 k biathlon.

“Having the opportunity to attend national training camps … I have noticed a huge improvement in my technique,” she added. “It has been such an advantage for me to be in the same environment with the high-performance athletes, seeing how the train and learning from them.”

Hudak wrapped up 2015 with two World Cup golds, two silvers and a bronze in cross-country, and a silver and a bronze in biathlon.

Chris Klebl

It’s a close call between several Canadian Para-Nordic teammates for the men’s pick for honorable mention, but Klebl tops the list as he placed third overall on the cross-country World Cup and is currently first in the IPC rankings. Standing biathlete Mark Arendz was was fourth overall in biathlon, and longtime team veteran Brian McKeever — a visually impaired distance specialist — won most of the races he jumped into for third overall in cross-country.

Canada’s Chris Klebl racing to gold in the cross-country 10 k sit-ski at the 2014 Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. (Photo: Matthew Murnaghan/Canadian Paralympic Committee)

In Asahikawa, both Klebl and Arendz notched back-to-back bronze medals before Klebl placed second in both the 10 and 15 k cross-country races. Klebl, a 2014 Paralympic gold medalist in the 10 k, went on to win the 15 k at World Cup Finals.

McKeever won the 20 k that same day in Surnadal (he won the same event at 2015 World Championships; it was the lone race he competed in there) and took first in the 10 k classic in Japan as well.

Arendz picked up two bronze medals at World Cup Finals in the biathlon sprint and following pursuit.

Klebl edged American Dan Cnossen by 40 points for third overall on the World Cup, making Cnossen — who won his first World Cup in Japan and achieved multiple podiums later in the season — worthy of mention as well.

***

Other 2015 Skiers of the Year (SOTY): Junior | Collegiate | Nordic Combined | Biathlon

May 12, 2015
Fourth No More, Soule Up to Third Overall in IPC World Cup with Five Medals at World Champs

Andy Soule and his hardware from 2015 IPC World Championships: five medals with three silvers and two bronze. (Photo: James Netz)

Andy Soule took one look at the skate course at the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) World Championships — with technical downhills and a massive uphill — and thought, I could do that. The 35-year-old Army veteran previewed it the day before the final race in Cable, Wis., and found it to be “fairly difficult by our standards,” he said in a phone interview last week.

Difficult in the sense that he’s a sit skier who relies entirely on his upper body and core strength, double poling everything from flats to steep hills. The course was designed for standing athletes — with two freestyle legs in the mixed relay, but the U.S. only had one man that could skate.

“We wanted to enter a relay at World Champs, but we only had one standing athlete available to us, Omar Bermejo, who had been battling sickness during these events so running him twice on a super cold day did not seem like the best idea,” U.S. Paralympics High Performance Director John Farra explained in an email. “So we floated it by Andy and he did not hesitate to say yes! … This is the first time a sitting athlete has done the standing course in the relay, so that was fun as countries came up to me to be sure we had not made a mistake.”

It wasn’t against the rules, as Soule pointed out: “There is no rule that says you have to have a sit skier or a stand skier on either one; factors are just supposed to take care of those.” So as the second leg of the U.S. mixed relay on Feb. 1, he headed out after teammate Oksana Masters tagged him in fourth of seven teams.

Farra’s Take on the “Sit-Ski Heavy” U.S. Team:

“It’s a good thing… we have been able to attract sitting athletes from other sports and they are having success, which is getting attention from other sitting athletes,” U.S. Paralympics High Performance Director and Coach John Farra wrote in an email. “We have proven that we can be a good sport for summer sport athletes looking for cross training and a new challenge and tough competition.”On the other side we are very much interested in increasing the [numbers] of standing and visually impaired athletes who can develop into strong international racers. Those who are finding success are finding it best to join up with a USSA Club program so they can be training & racing with other standing (able bodied) skiers as much as possible.”

“Our team is very sit-ski heavy right now, and while we didn’t really go into the relay with an expectation of a high place or anything, they decided to go ahead and field me on the standup course,” Soule said from his home in Pearland, Texas. “I told my coaches I believed it was entirely doable … it’s probably not any sort of a competitive advantage for sure, but it was an interesting experience, and it went pretty well.”

Soule came through the exchange in seventh, just seven seconds behind Germany’s Tino Uhlig, a standing skier who uses one pole, in sixth. With sit-skier Tatyana McFadden and Bermejo, a single-arm amputee, racing the third and fourth legs, respectively, the Americans placed seventh, 45.4 seconds out of sixth.

From the outset, the mixed relay was the team’s weakest event of the week, one in which they did not field a team at last World Championships. However, more symbolically, it capped their historic showing in Cable, where Soule racked up five medals — unprecedented for a U.S. cross-country skier at World Championships — and competed in all seven events, including the relay.

He was glad he did it.

“It have me a really good gauge of where we are in terms of what relative speeds look like for sit skiers versus standup athletes,” Soule said. “On the largest climb of that race, I was passed by one of the best standup skiers in the world in our sport, Nils-Erik Ulset, of Norway. I think it was an interesting event for a lot of people to see exactly what is possible for a sit skier, too.”

Andy Soule navigates a turn during one of his six individual races at 2015 IPC World Championships in late January in Cable, Wis. Soule medaled in five of those events. (Photo: James Netz)

And he held his own on the descents. “I definitely didn’t lose any time on downhills,” Soule added.

“Andy left Cable as a bit of a Legend,” Farra wrote. “5 medals and climbing & descending Telemark Hill successfully!”

In his eighth year on the U.S. Paralympics Nordic team, it was not only Soule’s most successful World Championships, it was perhaps the highlight of his career after winning bronze in biathlon at the 2010 Paralympics.

“This is a pretty high highlight,” Soule said. “After the second podium, I just started feeling like that wasn’t a fluke. This isn’t just a one-time thing, I’m really up here with the top of the field. I can compete with these guys. I can come out and compete on a level with the top guys every day. It was a confidence builder as well when you have that feeling.”

“After the second podium, I just started feeling like that wasn’t a fluke … I can come out and compete on a level with the top guys every day.” — Andy Soule, who earned three silver medals and two bronze at the 2015 IPC World Championships in Cable, Wis., unprecedented for an American

That feeling translated into three silver medals in two of three biathlon events and the cross-country 10-kilometer race at the 2015 championships, and two bronze in the cross-country 15 k and 1 k sprint (where Soule charged up from fourth with 40 meters to go to take third). On Monday, the IPC named Soule its January athlete of the month across all sports.

Prior to this season, he had a Paralympic bronze from 2010 and placed fourth twice during last winter’s 2014 Paralympics in Sochi, Russia.

“I wanted to break through that last little barrier for sure,” Soule said of his tendency toward wooden medals. “Between being almost on the podium and being a solid, consistent at least podium-potential finisher … that’s kind of been the source of all the little tweaks and changes we’ve been working with over the past year.”

2015 U.S. Paralympics Nordic World Championships Team in Cable, Wis. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics Nordic)

Asked specifically about those changes, U.S. High Performance coach Eileen Carey explained, “To talk about what any one individual athlete has done to improve is to talk about the whole team,” she wrote in an email.

Everyone on the team is analytical and thoughtful when it comes to what they need to work on and how to achieve those changes, she added. “They have created a really cool team environment focused on improving as individuals and as a team.”

For Soule, it was about relaxing his technique at race pace.

“He has always skied well at level 2, but speed had previously introduced a lot of wasted, inefficient movements into his technique, especially on flat terrain,” Carey wrote. “His ski speed and relaxed technique have always been there, it was just a matter if translating them to a race pace.”

In September, they started with rollerski sessions on the treadmill with live video so Soule could see the changes he was making as he tried them out.

“Once we had the cues we knew worked for him, we brought it to snow this fall,” Carey explained. “It has been an evolution and I am sure it will continue to evolve. We did a lot of video analysis during and after the first World Cup in Finland in December and spent the pre-World Champs camp honing in on some of the patterns we saw from that. He and his teammates have driven the process and we have worked to find the process and communication style that works best with each athlete.”

Andy Soule working on technique during a treadmill session on Sept. 16 at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, N.Y.

As a result, Soule came out of the World Cup opener in Vuokatti, Finland, with two fourth-place finishes in the cross-country 10 k and biathlon sprint. While they weren’t podiums, he could feel a difference.

“What I used to be doing was concentrated more on high tempo,” he said. “My emphasis on training recently has been to focus on flat sections of the course, what standup, able-bodied skiers would be considering a V2-technique section, lengthening out the pole stroke.”

He continued to work on his technique at U.S. nationals in early January and at the team’s pre-World Championships training camp after that. He also switched to shorter poles this season.

“I think everything just builds off what you’ve been working on in the past,” he explained. “You keep watching video of yourself, keep looking at races and identify what did work and then what little things we can maybe experiment with to get a little more speed.”

Soule approached the biggest races of the season in Cable hoping to see improvement first, then results.

“I wasn’t really worried going in what specific places I was aiming for — you can never really control that because you can never control how good everyone else is going to be,” he said. “But I wanted to see a personal improvement in what I would be able to accomplish as compared to how I’ve been performing in the past year.”

As for which medals meant the most to him, he said his bronze in the cross-country 15 k was something he’d remember.

Andy Soule’s stack of medals from 2015 IPC World Championships in Cable, Wis., where he earned three silver and two bronze between two biathlon and three cross-country races. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics Nordic)

“It meant a lot to get the medals in the cross-country races just because that long-distance race, the first cross-country race of the week, was actually my first-ever podium in a cross-country race,” he said. “And it also boosts my confidence going into a biathlon event. It used to be, in order to have a shot at the podium in biathlon, I had to outshoot the top competitors. They had to miss shots in order for me to have a shot at the podium. Now I have that confidence that I can ski right with them. If neither of us misses anything, between me and the top competitors, I’m still in it.”

Now third overall in the IPC World Cup standings with two major stops remaining (this weekend in Asahikawa, Japan and at World Cup Finals from March 16-22 in Surnadal, Norway), Soule said he mostly wanted to put together a “solid string of really great performances” for the rest of the season. Beyond that, he has his sights set on the 2018 Paralympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

“I’m right at that age and I’m right at the point in my career where I’m in the prime of real top-performance potential,” he said. “I feel really great about what I have going forward and that I’ll be able to build on it and still improve on it.”

In most every interview in Cable, Soule tossed around the word: “team.” He reiterated that he couldn’t have done it without his teammates and turned the focus toward their many successes at this year’s World Championships as well, including five Americans making the sit-ski sprint finals (three men and two women), and Masters tallying silver and bronze in the cross-country 5 k and cross-country sprint, respectively.

“It just feels really good to have great teammates,” Soule said. “You’re always cheering for each other and everyone wants to see everyone else succeed, so it makes practice more fun when we’re all there and it makes racing more exciting. A good team component is really important to what we have going right now.”

“Lots of good things were going in Cable beyond the medals,” Farra added.

Masters currently ranks first in the World Cup in cross-country. Stay tuned for her interview.

February 12, 2015
Canada’s 10-Time Paralympian, Bourgonje Bows Out, Keeps Spreading Paralympic Message

Colette Bourgonje racing at her 10th Paralympics in March, the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. (Photo: Cross Country Canada)

Twenty-two years ago, Colette Bourgonje was a grade-school teacher with a ticket to the Albertville Paralympics in France. A Saskatchewan native, she had learned how to nordic sit ski a year earlier — all while teaching physical education in Saskatoon.

But the school wasn’t about to let her take off to compete at her first Paralympics. At the time, Bourgonje was paying her own way to do so, and since landing a temporary teaching contract in 1989, she was trying to secure more job stability.

Yet passing up the Paralympics wasn’t an option, she told herself. Bourgonje quit her job and resolved to find another one when she returned.

Ten-time Paralympian Colette Bourgonje (l) with Melanie Florizione, vice principal of a school in Regina, Saskatchewan, during an appearance after the Sochi Paralympics. (Courtesy photo)

A national-level cross-country runner as a teenager, Bourgonje was in a car accident her senior year, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down. Four years later in 1984, she took up wheelchair racing and became the first to graduate the University of Saskatchewan’s physical-education department in a wheelchair.

With the competitive bug back in her system, she tried sit skiing for the first time in 1991 and immediately fell in love. More similar to cross-country running than wheelchair racing, she began to work at improving in that sport as well.

After competing in Albertville in the winter of ’92, Bourgonje qualified for the Barcelona Olympics that summer. There, she won two bronze medals in wheelchair racing, and went on to claim two more bronze medals at the 1996 Atlanta Summer Games. She also raced at the 2000 Summer Olympics.

Not one to take a breather, Bourgonje became the only athlete in the world to compete in all seven Paralympic Winter Games from 1992 to 2014. She tallied six Winter Paralympic medals — three silver and three bronze — between the 1998, 2006 and 2010 Games, and went down in history as the first Canadian to win a Paralympic medal at home in Vancouver (she earned silver in the 10 k sit ski).

On the phone from her home in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan’s third largest city along the North Saskatchewan River, Bourgonje reflected on some of her career highlights in the last 24 years. At 52, she announced her retirement from the Canadian Para-Nordic Team late last month.

“Carrying the flags out in Nagano and Torino, carrying the Canadian flag out was absolutely fantastic,” she said of her flag-bearing honors. “Getting the first medal in Canada was an amazing experience. Being on the podium in that 10 k was just like, whoa. I was so happy.”

At Vancouver’s closing ceremony in 2010, she received the Whang Youn Dai Achievement Award, given to an individual at each Paralympics who has shown to conquer adversities through sporting excellence.

In her third nomination for Saskatchewan’s Female Athlete of the Year award, she won it in 2010. She remembered writing the acceptance speech, which she never expected to deliver, before a friend attended the awards ceremony for her in Saskatoon.

“I just whipped it off in five minutes really thinking I would never get that award,” she recalled. “We were in Russia and I think the other thing that happened that same week … I finally got a [World Cup] medal in Russia that was the only gold I ever won. I was just like, I cant believe this is happening! That’s why I would’ve been satisfied to say this was a great career.”

After finding success in Russia, Bourgonje decided to commit to another season through 2011 World Championships in Russia. There, she racked up another gold medal to add to her growing list, which included two overall International Paralympic Committee (IPC) World Cup victories in 1998 and 2005.

“After 2010, I did say that was going to be my last Paralympics,” she recalled.

Around that time, she asked one of her coaches, Peter Eriksson, the Athletics Canada Olympic and Paralympic head coach, how you know when you’re ready to be done. “He said you’ll know,” Bourgonje said. “And I did.”

Colette Bourgonje competes in the 5 k sitting at the 2014 Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. (Photo: Matthew Murnaghan/Canadian Paralympic Committee)

The courses in Sochi simply weren’t for her. “It’s a great course for double amputees,” she said, with massive climbs and descents, not the kind of flowing course she favored. She had raced well at the December World Cup in Canmore, Alberta, placing fourth and fifth, but suffered from low iron and vitamin B12 levels in Sochi.

“I knew I did everything I could to be physically ready to race,” she said.

But she was tired. In three races, Bourgonje placed 13th twice (5 k and 12 k) and 16th in the sprint.

“It’s all good; it was fun,” she added.

Perhaps one of her greatest sports successes was Brittany Hudak, Bourgonje explained. Two years ago, she met Hudak, now 20, working at a local Canadian Tire in Prince Albert and persuaded her to try nordic skiing. Not exactly sure how to coach an arm amputee at the time, Bourgonje quickly became her mentor.

This past season, Hudak made her World Cup debut and qualified for the Sochi Paralympics.

“This year traveling and training with Brittany was great — it was great to see a different kind of success,” Bourgonje said. “She’s just having the time of her life.”

Without Bourgonje on the team this coming season, she said three men remain on Canada’s Para-Nordic World Cup squad and Hudak is the lone development-team member.

“She has a lot of people willing to help her,” Bourgonje explained. “I’ve been her mentor and the person she’ll come to asking questions, but she definitely has it all together and will get what she needs … I would like to see her racing in Korea [in 2018]. That would be pretty awesome.”

One of Bourgonje’s early coaches (along with Para-Nordic Head Coach Robin McKeever), Bruce Craven will continue to work with Hudak on her training plans.

“[Craven] has been providing me with programs since July of last year and still continues to write them but we are in the process of trying to get me on a yearly training plan which is different from what I did last year,” Hudak wrote in an email.

“Colette has had a huge impact on me in the sense that she was first an inspiration and a role model for me. Then she became a mentor for me which really helped me become a better skier in a short period of time.

Brittany Hudak competes in the 5 k standing at the 2014 Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. (Photo: Matthew Murnaghan/Canadian Paralympic Committee)

“Since I was new to the sport I didn’t know who I could contact to learn more about getting started in the sport so Colette helped me out a lot with the resources that were available to me and informed me of what steps I needed to take in order to get to a high performance level of sport,” she added. “Colette was also willing to chat with me at any time if I ever had questions and wanted some advice so I think she was very good with being a friend and a mentor.”

As for what Bourgonje’s up to now, she recently returned from an Olympic/Paralympic tour at schools around the province and will continue to do similar speaking appearances throughout the summer.

“The Paralympics have not really been in the forefront — every speaking opportunity I get, I say it’s a parallel event to the Olympics…” she said. “It’s picking up, but it’s not yet at an equal … [or] seen as a parallel movement yet.

“When you medal at the Paralympics, you don’t come home to $20,000 dollars for medaling,” she added. “It’s a great movement, but it’s not well known.”

Between traveling around the Canada to deliver her message, Bourgonje also wants to return to teaching. While she’s taught everything from phys ed to health, math, and science, it’s the energy of the students she’s missed. Substitute teaching could be a good remedy for that, she said.

During her full-time racing days, Bourgonje taught part time until 2008, largely paying out of pocket to compete until 2005, when Team Visa started sponsoring her. She met Canada’s carding (government-funding) criteria for wheelchair racing at the Atlanta marathon in 1996, then received assistance from Cross Country Canada for nordic in 1998 leading up to the Nagano Olympics.

“You can be carded in one sport and they give you [$]1,500 a month at that time (that was the highest funding at the time),” she explained in an email. “Carding has now increased to [$]1,800 a month to live and train on.”

Eighteen months before the 2010 Olympics, she quit her Saskatoon elementary school job and moved to Canmore for what she thought was one final push.

“It was very stressful. I’d put everything on the line,” she told The Star Phoenix.

After the ’92 Winter and Summer Paralympics, she landed a job in Saskatoon’s recreation department. In 1994, the Burnsville school district hired her.

“I do feel that teaching part-time kept me grounded and very appreciative of what I received,” she told FasterSkier. “You know what they say whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I also loved my job and was only stressed out when I had to apply for leaves in the winter to go to compete.”

Colette Bourgonje doing some mountain-board work during a Canadian Para-Nordic Team training camp in Arizona two years ago. (Photo: Robin McKeever)

In the last couple months Bourgonje has backed off full-time training to enjoy more recreational outings — like kayaking — and said she’s looking forward to skiing in the Nisbet Provincial Forest with her partner George, who grooms the trails right out of their backyard.

“I’m really wanting to enjoy and not feel stiff and tired — no more four-hour skiing for me,” she said. “A couple hours to enjoy wherever we are absolutely [doing] … or skiing with kids.”

Last year, she met an 8-year-old boy named Tyrese, who’s missing part of his arm, while shopping for batteries for her heart-rate monitor.

“He was getting into a little red car they have set up at the mall, I asked him if he liked skiing he said he did so I asked him where his parents were,” Bourgonje recalled.

She talked to his mother, gave her a card with her contact info and asked where Tyrese went to school — just in case they forgot to get back to her. After a training camp last October, Bourgonje went to his school to see if he was still interested.

“We set him up with skis/poles but he had no boots. While we were in Canmore, the school bought boots for him,” she explained.

Later, Bourgonje brought him to ski on the trails near her house. When she returned from Russia in March, she took Tyrese and a sit-skier out on less-than-ideal conditions. But they stuck with it.

“Right now we have another 12 year old with no arms, Tyrese, Kristen, a girl in the hospital, a six year old, and a girl I am [bringing] a racing chair to today…” she wrote on Friday. “So setting up something for all of them to be active seems to be the way to go.

“[Tyrese is] a reason to stay in shape and go skiing with him and see the smile on his face,” she said. “Exercise is a lifestyle and you can’t just stop.”

May 22, 2014
Wednesday Workout: Mountain Boarding Anaerobic Workout with Colette Bourgonje

Colette Bourgonje doing some mountain-board work during a Canadian Para-Nordic Team training camp in Arizona two years ago. (Photo: Robin McKeever)

This week’s workout comes from Colette Bourgonje, a 10-time Paralympian who recently retired from the Canadian Para-Nordic Team to enjoy other hobbies at her home in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, including kayaking, biking, and sitting outside sipping coffee. Over the last two decades, she’s racked up 10 medals between the Winter and Summer Paralympics (three silver and three bronze in sit skiing, and four bronze in wheelchair racing).

While Bourgonje, 52, won’t miss four-hour training sessions that leave her stiff and tired, she’s looking forward to going out and doing something of her choosing for a couple hours at a time.

“I just don’t feel good if I don’t do something,” Bourgonje says. “Exercise is a lifestyle and you can’t just stop.”

While she does the following speed workout on a mountain board, which sit skiers use for dryland training, this could be done as a double-pole rollerski workout on pavement or trail running with poles (although the latter won’t give you as much of an upper-body workout).

“I like this workout because of the change in pace, which makes you focus on technique with speed and adds variety with the distance you end up putting in,” Bourgonje explains.

The Workout: Mountain Boarding Anaerobic Workout

Total time: Up to 2 hours

Warmup: 20-30 minutes with 3-4 accelerations

Intervals: 3 x 4-minutes in Zone 4, with fully recovery in between each (3-4 minutes of easy movement in Zone 1)

Rest: Take a 10-minute set break.

Repeat: 3 x 4-minute intervals (with recovery periods) once more, for a total of 24 minutes of work.

Cool down: 20-30 minutes with stretching after

May 21, 2014
In Third Season, Cnossen Aims to Lead U.S. Paralympics Nordic, Starting in Canmore
Lt. Dan Cnossen (U.S. Paralympics) racing to 11th in Tuesday’s sit-ski sprint at the IPC World Cup in Canmore, Alberta. (Photo: Pam Doyle)

One of the most successful men on the U.S. Paralympics Nordic Team last season, Lt. Dan Cnossen cut right to the chase when asked about his training this summer and fall.

“I think we’re going to find out real quick when I go up against the Russians,” Cnossen responded in a phone interview before the first International Paralympic Committee (IPC) World Cup in Canmore, Alberta, from Dec. 9 to 17.

According to U.S. Paralympics High Performance Director John Farra, Cnossen, originally from Topeka, Kansas, is relatively new to the sport. He joined the team after the 2010 Winter Paralympics, and in the three years since he’s been living and training in Winter Park, Colo., Cnossen has risen to lead the U.S. men’s sit-ski team.

Lt. Dan Cnossen (Navy) racking up one of three national titles at U.S. Adaptive Championships last season in Midway, Utah.

“He trains unbelievably professionally,” Farra said. “He really puts everything into it.”

A Navy SEAL who lost both his legs in an Afghanistan explosion in 2009, the first day he was promoted to lieutenant, Cnossen, 33, has full use of his core.

“He is a ‘V’ cut, super-strong … looking guy,” Farra said.

Last year, Cnossen excelled on the domestic and international scene, notching podiums at U.S. nationals and the IPC World Cup in Cable, Wis.

This summer, he ventured down to Argentina to train and race the 21-kilometer Marchablanca and 42 k Ushuaia Loppet. “That trip really reinvigorated my training,” Cnossen said.

Skiing on snow is important to Cnossen, because he describes his mountain board (a sit skier’s equivalent to rollerskis) as a “strength machine.”

“It’s very hard to work my cardio on it because it doesn’t roll very fast,” he said.

Lt. Cnossen of the U.S. Paralympics Nordic National Team doing loaded pull-ups during a strength session at the Lake Placid Olympic Training Center two summers ago. (Photo: U.S. Paralympics Nordic/Facebook)

Using prosthetic legs, Cnossen has devised other ways to raise his heart rate.

“You do what you can, and for me, I was a big runner before my injury,” he said. “I’m very lucky that I can do it, and I’m really lucky that I can walk too. ”

He mostly runs 5- and 10-k races, which helps with his nordic training.

“Plus, running gives me a chance to rest my shoulders,” he said.

Cnossen is testing in a new custom sit ski this year, a lighter model that he hopes will help him ski faster.

“It’s a really important part of the sport; you have to be comfortable, you have to be well secured … not only for power transfer, but for ski control,” he said. “I found a group of engineers who were willing to work with me and they’ve done a great job.”

Summing up his thoughts about the season ahead, Cnossen said he was confident in his skiing abilities.

“I’m hoping I’m a little better tactician,” he said. “I know I’m stronger physically this year and I have better equipment so it will be exciting to see how I end up on the results list.”

Lt. Dan Cnossen at the start of a sprint qualifier at a 2013 test event in Sochi, Russia.

In terms of tactics, he said he needs to work on sprinting.

“I try to be a sponge,” he said. “Since this is only my third year, every time I go to a World Cup I try to watch the Russians and the athletes from other countries. I watch what lines they take. Are they in the track are they out of the track? Their rhythm of double poling, the nuances of ski handling. I hope it pays off.”

Also a biathlete who’s tweaked his training, Cnossen predicts improvement there as well.

“I think you’ll see some improved hit rates,” he said. “I knew the first couple of years, even if I shot perfectly I wouldn’t ski fast enough, no where near it. First and foremost, I thought the strength and conditioning would take the longest to develop. I have a background in shooting and I can tweak that in a relatively short amount of time compared to how long it would take do develop the strength to conditioning to be fast enough to keep up with the top guys.”

So far, he’s notched ninth place in the 10 k at Canmore, leading the U.S. men. On Tuesday, he placed 11th in the sprint behind teammates Sean Halsted and Andy Soule in eighth and ninth, respectively.

Lt. Dan Cnossen (U.S. Paralympics) tallied multiple podiums at the IPC World Cup in Cable, Wis., in January. (Photo: James Netz)

***

What: IPC World Cup at the Canmore Nordic Centre in Canmore, Alberta

Schedule: 

IPC Cross Country World Cup
- December 9 10:00am Men’s 10km/Women’s 5km Skate
- December 10 11:00am Sprint Classic (Heats start at 12:00)
-  December 12 10:00am Men’s 20km/Women’s 15km Classic
IPC Biathlon World Cup
-  December 14 10:00 Biathlon Sprint
- December 15 10:00 Biathlon Middle Distance
- December 17 10:00 Biathlon Long Distance
December 12, 2013
World-Class Wheelchair Racer, McFadden Sets Sights on Sochi

Tatyana McFadden competing at one of her first international cross-country ski races at the 2013 IPC World Cup in Cable, Wis.(Photo: James Netz)

Tatyana McFadden is coming off an impressive couple of years.

Winning the New York City Marathon last month, the 24-year-old University of Illinois student became the first person to win the Chicago, Boston, London and New York City marathons – the elusive Grand Slam – in a single year. In July, McFadden became the first athlete to win six gold medals at the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) Athletics World Championships in Lyon, France. No stranger to elite competition, the three-time Paralympian holds 10 medals in wheelchair racing, three of them gold from the 2012 London Paralympic Games.

Tatyana McFadden at the 2013 U.S. Adaptive National Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah, where McFadden won the sit-ski sprint. (Courtesy photo)

Now with her track and marathon seasons over for the year and with the 2014 Winter Paralympics in Sochi, Russia, on the horizon, McFadden is days away from beginning her second season as a nordic skier at the IPC World Cup in Canmore, Alberta, starting Dec. 9.

John Farra, the U.S. Paralympics Nordic high-performance director, tells the story of how McFadden came to his sport.

“About a year and a half ago I got a text message at midnight from the [U.S. Paralympics] alpine director [Kevin Jardine] saying, ‘Hey, I’m at the ESPYs and Tatyana McFadden wants to be a nordic skier!’ ” Farra said.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Jardine reportedly told her, “Are you kidding me? No one wants to do nordic. Do you know how hard that is?”

“I guess you don’t understand anything about me,” McFadden replied.

“She contacted me and said ‘How can I get into the skiing thing?’ ” Farra explained. “So she comes to the national championships and won the sprint race and was very competitive in the others. I said, ‘You should come to the World Cup in Cable, Wisconsin. There may be time for you to make the Paralympic Games.’ So she did and she made the national team in just one race. She’s just so frickin’ strong.”

In a phone interview last week, McFadden described her busy upcoming month, which starts this week in Canmore.

“I’ll be there a few days before and I’ll do a competition, then I literally fly back [to Illinois], take a final, graduate, move out, then I head home for Christmas,” she said.

Majoring in human development and family studies, she will give the graduation speech to her class.

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, with spina bifida, a birth defect that paralyzed her from the waist down, McFadden spent her first six years in an orphanage walking on her hands. A disabilities commissioner for the US Health Department, Deborah McFadden visited the orphanage and adopted Tatyana before raising her in Baltimore. Since then, Tatyana has been an activist on several fronts, advocating against a 2012 Russian law prohibiting Americans from adopting Russian children. She was also behind the Maryland Athletics Equity for Students with Disabilities Act, which was passed in 2010.

McFadden racing at the 2013 IPC Athletics World Championships in Lyon, France, where she won an unprecedented six gold medals. (Courtesy photo)

For now, she’s focused on getting back to Russia, this time as a Winter Paralympian. To manage the transition from wheelchair racing to skiing, McFadden said she’s been spending a lot of time in the gym on the SkiErg and doing interval training.

One of her biggest challenges has been learning how to handle the cold. McFadden experienced some issues with frostbite while training, but her enthusiasm toward the sport has made up for the hardships. Nicknamed “The Beast,” it’s no surprise when McFadden says, “I love to train really hard.”

She is also excited to get on snow in her new sit-ski. At last season’s U.S. Adaptive Ski Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah, McFadden won the sit-ski sprint in a borrowed, ill-fitting sled.

“[The ski] was too big for me,” she said. “I’m a size 10 1/2 and I was riding in a size 14; it was way too big. I was sitting too high which really threw off my balance. I didn’t have control going down the hill too well and I really wanted to be shorter.”

Her new sit ski is designed to put her in a more-forward position, similar to her racing wheelchair. McFadden said it feels “a lot more natural and transitions well from wheelchair racing. … [It’s] literally just the bucket and it’s an absolutely beautiful, beautiful bucket. It’s extremely light and it’s purple, my favorite color. I’m really excited to take it out again.”

Starting in Canmore, McFadden will have plenty of opportunity to get used to her new setup. At the end of the month, she’ll head to Utah for her second nordic nationals in early January, once again at Soldier Hollow. Then she’ll head to Germany for the IPC World Cup in Oberstdorf from Jan. 16-19, and after that, Winter Park, Colo., for more altitude training.

Tatayan McFadden shows off her new sit ski in a promotional photo from her sponsor BP. (Photo: BP Team USA/Facebook)

“As soon as I graduate I’ll be on snow all the way up to Sochi,” McFadden said.

According to Farra, working with her on snow will the give the U.S. Paralympics Nordic coaches a chance to help her improve her technique.

“She’s so strong and unbelievably fit,” Farra said. “So she’s got the most important part of being a nordic skier down, and you can’t fake that.”

McFadden has no illusions about the challenges ahead of her. “I am really new to skiing,” she said. “My goals are, first of all, to make the team and head over. Then I’ll take it event by event. My goal [in Sochi] is to make the finals.”

As for her podium potential, Farra said, “We really don’t know. She’s fired up about it. She’ll have a day or two to train in Canmore before the races and she’ll spend the rest of the winter skiing with us trying to get ready for Sochi to see what she can do there.”

While Farra can’t predict McFadden’s performance in her new sport, he knows what kind of attention she can bring to the developing sport.

“When the Games are on, you are going to see Kikkan Randall skiing in a BP commercial and you’re going to see Tatyana McFadden skiing in a sit-ski on these commercials that are run all the time throughout the winter,” he said. In partnership with the U.S. Olympic Committee, NBC has committed to 50 hours of coverage for the 2014 Paralympics.

Thinking about her first Winter Paralympics, McFadden isn’t sure what to expect.

Tatayan McFadden shows off her new sit ski in a promotional photo from her sponsor BP. (Photo: BP Team USA/Facebook)

“For track, since I’ve been to other races and other Paralympics… I know what to expect between events and the transitions and about getting on the bus and off the bus and into the venue and what its going to feel like,” she said. “For Sochi, I don’t know any of that. I have no idea because everything is so new for me. I have to just be relaxed and go with the transitions and then when it comes time for me to put my skis on the snow, I have to remember everything I’ve learned … and ski as fast as I can and hopefully make people proud.”

Among the new experiences awaiting McFadden is biathlon racing. Due to a relatively small pool of athletes, adaptive skiers are encouraged to compete in both nordic and biathlon races. Brand new to skiing at nationals last year, she didn’t race biathlon. “I told John [Farra] that I wanted to focus on skiing,” McFadden said.

However, she did get introduced to the sport and practiced a bit on the shooting range. Despite some archery experience, McFadden said she never shot a gun before trying biathlon last January.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun,” she said. “I’ll shoot the targets as best I can, and if I miss them all, I know what it feels like to do a lot of laps. In track, doing [laps] is just a normal day for me. I’m not really too concerned about it. What is really different about biathlon is that I’m not used to stopping in a race. I’m used to going hard from start to finish and not having to slow down and take a deep breath and try to hit the targets.”

When asked what it will mean to her to return to Russia, she said she’s “really excited.”

“It’s part of my culture, it’s part of who I am, and that will never be apart from me,” she added. “But I’m going to be going and competing for the United States of America.”

Comparing her two “home” nations, she says the Russians are behind the times when it comes to accepting people with disabilities.

“[In the U.S.], you can get jobs and you can live a normal life,” she said. “That’s not really the case for Russia. Some places are not accessible, in America places have to be accessible. Just seeing athletes come in and seeing how strong the athletes are and seeing them compete. I think its going to be really good for them.”

Now a U.S. Paralympics National Team member, Tatyana McFadden (l) after placing second in the women’s 5 k at 2013 U.S. Adaptive Championships last January. Beth Requist (c) won it in 25:13.9, and Kristy Vaughn (U.S. Paralympics Development Team) was third (+2:34.4).

December 5, 2013
After London Paralympics, Dana Could Aim for Sochi

U.S. Paralympian Alicia Dana competing in a criterion in Greenville, S.C., earlier this summer. In late June, Dana, 43, made the Paralympic team and will be traveling to London later this month for the 2012 Summer Games from Aug. 29-Sept. 9. The Putney native also made the U.S. Paralympics Nordic Skiing Development Team earlier this year. (Courtesy photo)

Like most athletic children of a certain era in Putney, Vt., Alicia Dana grew up cross-country skiing. She learned the ropes from the legendary John Caldwell, a Putney School coach who went on to lead the U.S. Ski Team, and took up racing at an early age.

It wasn’t long until Dana, formerly Brelsford, developed an affinity for other sports as well. By the time she was 16, she had competed at two cycling nationals and become a repeat contender at cross-country Junior Nationals. The next year, however, an accident changed her life.

At age 17, Dana fell out of a tree and was paralyzed from the waist down. Twenty-six years later, she’s still in a wheelchair, but has greater athletic aspirations than ever before.

In less than two weeks, she’s headed to London for her first Paralympic Games. Dana, 43, is one of eight women on the U.S. cycling team and one of three competing in handcycling with a recumbent bike.

“I remember as a kid dreaming, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to go to the Olympics someday?’ but I feel like that was a completely different me back then, able-bodied and not having any idea what was in store for me in life,” Dana said in a phone interview on Aug. 3.

She laughed as she thought about her current self, a paraplegic with an 8-year-old daughter, preparing for the Paralympics. As a child, she could not have fathomed it.

What’s even more, Dana could potentially make the 2014 Winter Paralympics as well if she sticks with skiing.

Last season, she jumped back into sit-ski racing in earnest, starting with a gold and a bronze at U.S. nationals in Rumford, Maine. From there, she earned a trip to the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) World Cups in Minneapolis and Cable, Wis., where she represented the U.S. and used her new custom sit-ski.

Dana represented the U.S. at the IPC World Cups in Cable, Wis., and Minneapolis from Jan. 26-Feb. 2. With four top 10’s, she was consistently the top American female and landed a spot on the U.S. Paralympic Nordic Development Team this season. (Courtesy photo)

In the Midwest, Dana finished seventh twice and placed ninth in two other races, and was consistently the top U.S. woman. Her results spoke for themselves, and in late June, U.S. Paralympic Nordic Skiing selected Dana to its development squad.

According to High Performance Director John Farra, Dana met the team’s “emerging” or development criteria by finishing better than 25 percent back in one of the World Cup events.

She made the D-team with Kristy Vaughn and Augusto Perez, and could potentially elevate herself to the national team’s A- or B- standards, which currently provides a higher level of support to six others.

In an email, Farra described the program as fluid and wrote, “athletes can be advanced at any time up to the National Team (given they meet criteria), and in addition, we can choose to invest in anyone we want for any particular project (camp or competition) based on their commitment, performance, & potential.”

Given what he’s seen in Dana so far, he thinks she could reach the next tier. Before she won a national title in the 6-kilometer distance event last January and placed third in the preceding 5 k, Dana had not skied yet that winter. In fact, she hadn’t planned on racing in Rumford.

An email from her coach at Northeast Passage, an adaptive-sports program out of the University of New Hampshire, brought the championships to her attention.

“I came across one of the emails that [Cathy Thompson] had sent, that nationals were that week,” Dana said. “I was like, Oh my God, I’ve gotta go to nationals!”

It wasn’t before the reality of logistics set in. A single mom who lived several hours from Maine, Dana needed to make arrangements for her daughter, Willa. She also had to figure out how to get there, where to stay, and whether it was all worth it.

Her good friend Amy Caldwell, who was already in Rumford at the time, convinced her it was.

“I remember talking to her on the phone and she was like, ‘Get up here, just come!’ ” Dana said. “It was a combination of her encouragement and John Farra; he was going to be there so I suddenly realized there’s more structure to this whole thing … sounds like there could be some good competition and I should really just go and check it out.”

Getting Back on the Bike

About six months earlier in the summer of 2011, Dana had a similar internal conversation and ended up competing at the U.S. Paralympics Road Cycling Nationals in Augusta, Ga. It was her first time back on the handcycling scene since taking nearly a decade off to raise her daughter. A national criterion champion in 2001, she had her daughter a few years later, when handcycling became an Olympic sport in 2004.

When Dana returned to racing last year after going through a divorce, she had the same bike – which by now was painfully outdated.

“It was the biggest race of the year, and I got totally, totally creamed by everybody,” she said. “I remember thinking, ‘OK, now I know what the competition is and what I need to do,’ and it motivated me to really start training. I decided to take the next year and just train as hard as I could.”

That summer, her bike was later stolen when she got a flat and had to leave it on the side of the road. Public outcry in newspaper articles and on websites led to the bike’s return about a week later, but by then, the Putney community had already helped Dana raise some $10,000 dollars for a new one.

She used that money and a few grants from nonprofits like the Challenged Athletes Foundation and the Northeast Disabled Athletic Association to buy an $11,000-dollar Carbonbike designed by a handcyclist in Switzerland. The man who sold her the bike, Ken Bestine from Bike-On.com, offered to coach Dana informally, and the two worked together for a few months.

This past April, Dana tested her training at a cycling race in Montreal, where she made the U.S. team standard in a time trial. Suddenly, she was on the national cycling squad and faced the possibility of making the Paralympics a few months later.

Her national-team status and accompanying funding allowed her to hire a coach, and she chose Jim Cunningham from Greenville Cycle Center in South Carolina, who has worked with able-bodied and disabled athletes across the country. After a month of training with him, Dana and her housemate drove to Augusta in late June for another shot at the U.S. road cycling championships and a trip to London.

“There was one slot that was still open for all the women Paracyclists across all the different categories,” Dana said. “So I was, in a sense, competing with all the blind athletes, the amputee athletes, and managed to get the fastest time.”

One woman, Muffy Davis, beat her in the 19 k time trial, but Davis had prequalified. About 4 ½ minutes back, Dana averaged nearly 20 miles per hour.

“I had thought that I had a pretty decent race, but I had no idea really where I stood,” Dana recalled. “We went to that event that evening where they were going to announce the team and I convinced myself that I hadn’t made it, but we went anyway, like, ‘Oh, I’ll have a good attitude, cheer people on and it’ll be fun to see who gets to go.’ … Next thing I know my name’s being announced as a member of the team. It was pretty awesome. I was surprised and just utterly flabbergasted, like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe I did this.’ ”

With the Paralympics on the horizon from Aug. 29 to Sept. 9, Dana wasn’t sure what to expect. She didn’t watch the London Olympics over the last two weeks because she doesn’t have television. A weeklong U.S. team-training camp, which started Sunday in Buellton, Calif., would likely bring her up to speed.

The newest member on the team, Dana was excited to meet her teammates and get a feel for how things worked. On Sept. 5, she’ll compete in her first Paralympic event: the women’s individual time trial at Brands Hatch, a raceway venue in Kent, England, about a 45-minute drive from London.

Unsure how long the time trial would be, Dana said they are typically between 15 and 19 kilometers. She’ll also compete in the road race on Sept. 7, which she expected to be between 30 and 40 kilometers. If all went well, she might race the team relay on the 8^th, but she was unsure of the selection process.

Dana was also recovering from pressure sores, a common and serious ailment among active people in wheelchairs, especially those without feeling below the waist.

“It’s been kind of a hard month for some different reasons,” she said. “I had a cold and flu and then I got a couple of pressure sores on my rear end from riding so much. … They will heal up eventually, but it’s a real inconvenience because I’m going to be traveling a lot in the next month and a half.

“It definitely limits my ability to just function in my everyday life and that’s hard,” she added. “I’m just getting up to train and go to essential appointments and the rest of the time, lie down or I have a standing frame that allows me to be in a standing position, so it’s a real pain.”

An unemployed single mom, she’s had to balance this and full-time training with taking care of her daughter, who’s out of school for the summer. Most recently, Dana had to explain to her 8-year-old why she had to leave for California and then England.

Fortunately, Dana said she has great friends and a community that fully supports her.

“That’s a real energy boost,” she said.

Alicia Dana of Northeast Passage and Putney, Vt., races to victory on her old sit-ski in the women’s 6 k at 2012 U.S. nationals on Jan. 7 in Rumford, Maine.

All things considered, she’d love to make the podium at the Paralympics, but had no idea what the international competition was like.

“I know for our team … Davis [is] definitely faster than me, so I’m not looking to get a gold medal,” Dana said. “It would be awesome to get a medal and I think I must at least have potential for that because that was part of their criteria when they chose the team members.”

To prepare, she aimed to heal up and stick with her training plan, watch her nutrition, rest and recovery, and keep a positive attitude. Once she gets there, she’ll try to race as she normally would, focusing on her climbing strengths and strategies without getting wrapped up in what others were doing.

Similar qualities got her on the U.S. Paralympic Nordic Team. According to Farra, he promised to leave Dana alone until after the Paralympics to let her concentrate on cycling. Come mid-September, she expected to attend a ski-team training camp in Lake Placid.

“Clearly she is a natural athlete who knows how to push the limits and can handle the suffering that comes along with a difficult endurance sport,” Farra wrote. “We were very impressed with her results at the USA World Cups, and we are excited to see how far she can take her skiing.”

Dana said he’s already hinted at Sochi.

“Farra’s been holding out some carrots for me in that direction,” she said. “He wants me to set my sights on that so we’ll see.”

Her success so far has kept her dreaming.

“Doing well enough to go to the World Cup and doing well enough at the World Cup to realize, ‘Oh, well, there might be something in this for me,’ it’s just fed my interest and motivation,” she said. “It’s exciting, it’s great. Who would’ve thought, a 43-year-old single mom could have an athletic career ahead of her?”

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August 14, 2012
How Paralympians Train: Interview with Sean Halsted

Sean Halsted trails Dan Cnossen in the 12 k sit ski at 2012 U.S. Nationals in Rumford, Maine.

With the 2012 Paralympics starting in London in roughly a month, adaptive athletes who compete in summer sports are putting the finishing touches on their trainings. And winter athletes, too, are hard at work, training just as intensely as their able-bodied counterparts, if a little bit differently.

This spring in Bend, Oregon, FasterSkier chatted with Sean Halsted, a veteran member of the U.S. national team who finished seventh, ninth, and tenth in the sit-ski races at the Vancouver Paralympics. A college rower at Washington State who went on to join the Air Force, Halsted fell from a helicopter in 1998 and was paralyzed from the waist down. He started skiing in 2001 and is now one of he team’s stalwarts.

It’s no secret that sit skiers need an efficient and powerful double pole to get around a race course – and then best move very, very fast (in 2011, FasterSkier posted a video of Halsted starting U.S. Nationals). But besides adapting technique to best accommodate the different angle with which they plant their poles, adaptive athletes are also challenged by coming up with a training plan that prepares them physiologically without wearing out a few key sets of muscles.

The following is an edited excerpt from a longer interview.

FasterSkier: Do you do the same kind of periodization that the able-bodied skiers do throughout the year?

Sean Halsted: Yes. And the interesting part is trying to mirror that on the adaptive side, with how much volume is good volume is good volume, how much strength is good strength. For example, we’re talking about doing a great workout, but then you need to do an alternate workout [in the afternoon] using the same muscles? You can’t go for a run. You can’t switch it up to do the lower body. It’s all upper body.

FS: What’s a typical workout for you guys in the spring here in Bend?

SH: Out here, we try to get on snow and maximize that snow time. There’s a lot of that technique that you have to get down, and a lot of us just don’t have it. It’s not so much – I’d like to say that standing on skis is a lot harder than a sit ski, but there’s things about that sit ski that are harder than standing. And I think part of what that comes down to is the frustration level, in that you see a hill, and my hill is nowhere near what a standup skier thinks of as a hill. Turns, a standup skier doesn’t even think of it as a turn, but I think of it as a challenge. So you have to be comfortable with how that ski works on a downhill, on an uphill, what does the pole plant mean, you have to have a much more efficient double pole than a standup skier could get by with.

FS: So you’re just trying to get as many hours on snow as you can?

SH: Pretty much. You’re trying to maximize that with your strength workouts and your endurance workouts. You’re trying to do it on snow, and then saying, okay, you just did a strength workout, do you have enough strength in your arms to do something in the gym?

FS: If you’re skiing a lot in the mornings, what do you do in the afternoons?

SH: It’s been nice because the Athletic Club of Bend has opened their doors for us, and they have also been very accommodating. You basically go in and they ask what you want, and they try to make it happen, which is really cool. We’ve been at places before where the place wants to be accommodating, but how? They don’t know what you need, so they just wait for you to ask, and you don’t know what they have to offer. Maybe it’s a hotel and they say they have a weight room, but their weights are ten pounds and the room is the size of a closet.

So having the gym in town, they have a big weight room, they have cardio stuff that we can use, they have a SkiErg. It just gives you so many opportunities. They have tennis courts, even. Not that we’d play tennis, but it’s a big flat surface that you can use, and that you can’t really replicate anywhere else. They have a pool, which is what I’ve found is one of the best cross-training things. I’ve really fallen in love with swimming.

FS: So is it just based on how you feel each afternoon, you have to figure out what your body is capable of doing?

SH: They give us a schedule, and then you do a little bit of, “what can I do?” Yesterday was an alternate workout, just an easy workout, something. So I went in and went swimming. And then I meandered and saw what was available, and did some stretching.

FS: It sounds like the coaches aren’t always telling you exactly what to do – like you have to make some of those decisions yourself.

SH: Since I started [with the national team] in 2006, we have gone through three different coaching staffs, so each time they have to be introduced to what adaptive sport is. You think you can just take a coach from anywhere, and it doesn’t always work that way. There’s a lot of figuring out that goes along with this and what is expected of you is very vague. As an athlete you get vague feedback, and you’ve got to be able to find a way to stay in a positive place, not just a positive attitude but positive towards success, towards exertion and all this, so that you are doing the right thing at the right time, and not overexerting yourself or underexerting yourself.

FS: Do you feel like doing it since 2006 is long enough that you can do that for yourself?

SH: It’s still a challenge. You find enough that you now know that you don’t know anything, whereas before you were just basically ignorant, but you didn’t know it. But I think I do have a pretty good handle on a lot of stuff and what needs to be done. Having said that, there have been people on the team who just have that brain for the physiology that just puts me to shame. So I don’t want to say that I have bested them by any stretch of the imagination.

FS: What was your athletic background before you picked up adaptive skiing?

SH: In high school, I joined the cross country team to get myself in shape for soccer, and that’s what I ended up focusing on, cross country and track. And in college, I was a lightweight rower. When I joined the Air Force I went into a career field where we had to be selected. So it’s interesting to go from the performances with cross country where it’s still exertion, but it’s for a finite amount of time, and rowing the same sort of thing, to the Air Force where you have to extend that exertion over a much longer period of time, so you cannot do a max effort, but there’s no water breaks…. it’s a different kind of exertion.

FS: Does that help you mentally in skiing?

SH: Yes. Oh yes. And I’ve seen that in some of the athletes that we’ve tried to recruit, where they’re like, “oh, I gave it my all,” and, no, not so much. But it’s not their fault. They grew up differently. Some of the kids who have grown up with a disability have never been challenged because they have never been given the opportunity to be challenged. They don’t have any equals.

So I do think I have a good concept for it, and obviously there are people who have a stronger sense of competition and always have to be first. There were a couple guys on the team who retired in the last two years who were like that, they had to be first for everything. I wasn’t like that. But I loved being with them, and I liked being on their coattails, and pushing them and having them push me.

FS: Can you use a rowing ergometer?

SH: We can, depending on our level of injury. Most of us can, but we’re doing arms-only. For me, it’s very frustrating as a rower. It’s one of the reasons that I’m not rowing. People keep asking me, well why didn’t you go into adaptive rowing? It’s because I know what I can do, and I can’t do that anymore. But it’s still an alternative workout, so you’re using other muscles.

You wish – people are on bikes, and you want to jump in with them, but you can’t. You want to go play basketball, and you can, but it’s totally different in the chair. One guy on the team wanted to play ultimate Frisbee, and it seemed awesome, but you can’t use a chair in the grass. We could play on the tennis courts, but the other thing we have to watch out for is that our everyday chairs are not designed for sport. So we can have some very big spills. We could be dumping ourselves out of our chairs, and the last thing you want to do is break your chair.

FS: Coming from being a lightweight rower, you must have had to bulk up a lot to do this, huh?

SH: Actually no. But I am allowed to eat, which is different! It’s kind of a similar body mass. The difference is that we did a lot more squats, and now it’s all upper body.

FS: Do you do weights?

SH: Yeah. We try to do as much as we can. And that depends on what equipment is available that allows you to do those things. Can your chair fit into that frame or rack or apparatus? And then for a lot of us, it has to do with the ability to transfer [in and out of the chair] or not. It limits some people – they might have an athletic mind, but because their body makes it so hard to get around, they can’t attain the level that they could be.

We try to work a lot on the lats and that pulling motion, without overdoing the muscle on one side. Dips are a good example. You can’t just go to a dip bar because a lot of us can’t stand, so how do you get up to a dip bar? And then you’re up there, but you’re maxing out, so finding those machines that allow you to do those things is important. It’s fun… you don’t want to be the guy who’s saying “I can’t do that.” You’ve got to have an open mind about how to do as close to an exercise as possible. That’s what having coaches helps you with – you can easily shut yourself down, or go on the wrong track because you’re sure that something is great for you, even when really it’s not. They can help with finding the things that will work, and then are you doing them correctly. So finding something that mimics a pull up, or working on curls to counteract all of those triceps and the pulling down and a way motions. Plus we try to focus on the core.

FS: Yes, I assume that would be really important.

SH: For some of us, it’s really easy to say, okay, well I don’t have any core so I can’t use it. And that’s true, but, you have something. What we need to do is to get your brain to stop thinking and just start reacting. So all these balance things, like the balance ball and stuff like that are actually pretty good because it makes you do stuff that you don’t think you can do. Or you’re firing a muscle that you don’t think will help, like one that’s way up high on your stomach, and it can be doing the job of the one down below that you don’t have.

FS: So you’re creating new ways to achieve the same thing.

SH: It’s amazing – that’s one of the things that blew my mind. You’re watching guys that have a higher level injury, so theyir function is a lot less, maybe where they’re neurologically functional is right below the chest line, so they have no abs whatsoever, but they’re on their ski doing stuff that you never thought you could do, and you have abs.

A really good exercise for us is kayaking, actually. It teaches you about the core, and you’re going, I have to stay up because I don’t want to get wet, so you’ll do whatever it takes to stay up. And then next thing you know you’re firing muscles that you didn’t know about.

FS: That’s a cool idea for motivation.

SH: You can throw a ball at somebody, and they’ll say, well, I’m just not going to catch it. It will bounce off the wall. But in a kayak, they can’t just say no.

FS: It seems like a lot of the training is very individual for each of you. Is that a challenge?

SH: It is. It’s a total challenge, because we want to go off what is tried and true, but what is tried and true works for the standup athletes. There’s all kinds of literature about it, and we don’t have that. We have to come up with something that mimics that without doing it wrong. There are so many things that we could do that wouldn’t be right because we would overwork something. And then as well you have to play around with the level of injury and what is possible for this person. So there’s a lot of the coach coming up with an idea of what needs to happen, that he knows from his experience and research, and then okay, how does that apply to Sean, how does that apply to Jeremy, how does that apply to Dan. There’s a lot of flexibility. Which opens the door for somebody to either be complacent, or go too hard. It’s a balancing act all around.

July 31, 2012
U.S. Adaptive Nationals: Video Recap

RUMFORD, Maine — After the final sit-ski and stand-up distance events of the 2012 U.S. Adaptive Cross Country Championships on Saturday, athletes and coach John Farra reflect on their week (with three total races, including the 0.8 k sprint and 5/10 k) at Black Mountain in Rumford, Maine.

January 8, 2012
Cnossen, Edwards, Leach Capture Victories at Adaptive Nationals

Christina Kouros on her way to winning the adaptive 5km sit-ski. Photo: Flying Point Road.

RUMFORD, Maine — Following the completion of Thursday morning’s 10/15 k freestyle distance events, the adaptive skiers had their chance to take to the course at the 2012 U.S. Adaptive Cross Country Nationals at Black Mountain.

A change in schedule resulted with the adaptive race being shortened. The male sit-skiers completed four laps of the 2.5 k loop for 10 k while the women did two laps for 5 k.

With 18 athletes out on course, there was no shortage of excitement. All of the sit-skiers were out on course together, despite the fact that not all athletes were completing the same number of laps. Tactics played role, as athletes completing all four laps had to be sure they were conserving enough energy for the remainder of the race, while the athletes competing in the shorter distance were able to take a more aggressive stance.

Two racers head back into the stadium during the adaptive 5km sit-ski.

U.S. Paralympics High Performance Nordic Director John Farra was excited that 18 athletes competed in the event, matching the record number of entrants set on Tuesday in the sit-ski sprint race at Black Mountain.

In the stand-up division, David Leach outpaced Eric McDaniel, Jr., for the victory.

Dan Cnossen set a blistering pace to take the win in the men’s race by more than a minute. Cnossen was followed by his teammates on the U.S. Paralympic Nordic Team, Sean Halsted in second and Andy Soule in third.

In the women’s race, Sarah Edwards claimed her second win of the week with Christina Kouros second and Mikayla Briere in third.

Complete Results

All Flying Point Road photo proceeds will be donated to the National Nordic Foundation (NNF).

January 5, 2012
Not Sitting This One Out

The athletes are far fewer in number and the competitions receive even less press than most Nordic ski races, but the adaptive ski community is steadily growing and gaining momentum. And now the Central Cross-Country Ski Association (CXC) is getting involved.

Racing with a sit ski (Photo: www.flyingpointroad.com).

Over the past year, CXC has distributed over 120 sit skis to disabled athletes across the country. The first ten sit ski prototypes were produced by engineering graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the project has now been taken over by Isthmus Engineering, a private firm located in Madison.

Several engineers and manufacturing companies have donated their time and supplies to the project, reducing the cost of a single sit ski down to a mere $300. An athlete looking to purchase a sit ski outside the CXC program would pay over $1000.

The program reaches out to ski clubs, ski organizations, and adaptive recreational programs as well as the U.S. Adaptive Ski Team and U.S. Paralympics to provide sit skis for athletes in need. Equipment has also been provided to several individuals who have contacted CXC directly.

The sit skis manufactured by the CXC program are intended for introductory programs, and they are fully adaptable to suit almost any type of disability.

CXC is working to develop a pipeline for sit ski athletes to mirror the pipeline in place for nordic skiers. Reaching out to disabled youth, working with aspiring young athletes and encouraging sit skiers of all ages who want to compete, the program will provide opportunities that make sit skiing a lifelong sport–just like nordic skiing.

“This is the mission of CXC, and that holds true when we talk about Adaptive Programming,” CXC Executive and Athletic Director Yuriy Gusev told FasterSkier. “We know that this is the right thing to do, and continue to work hard to make the adaptive program a sustainable reality.”

August 13, 2010