Last year I got to go to Copper Mountain, Colorado and watch my brother compete in the U.S. Snowboarding Association Nationals. At the end of the day everybody went and crowded around a tent set up outside of the Chalet for the awards ceremony. That was the first time i ever realized that disabled people could snowboard like everybody else. Most of the disabled riders that placed were either a single or double lower leg replacement and i couldn't even imagine what it would be like to snowboard missing part of your leg. After the shock of seeing like 4 of those people getting medals i saw the craziest thing ever, a man that was partially paralyzed from the waist down got 3rd in slopestyle. The man couldn't climb up the ladder by himself to get on stage and needed help getting onto the podium, he even had a cane! i can't even imagine how much that guy works and works and works to get better to the point where he can beat people with special bionic legs. At the ceremony they talked about how snowboarding wasn't part of the paralympics yet and that they only needed one more year of a national competition before they would be eligible. In this article it talks about canadian snowboarders wanting to be in the Paralympics. The canadians have a problem with getting enough people to be in the event. I think that there need to be more people aware of the fact that you can do a sport like snowboarding without a limb. Its different than like in track where that one kid got disqualified cuz his new legs made him too fast. i think it would be really cool if there were more disabled riders.
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