December
13, 2000
Disabled
ski programs growing in popularity
By The Associated
Press
DENVER
- Most Americans would never venture
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The
Associated Press
Learning
to ski: Lynn
Deasey, 9, of Island Lake, Ill., receives some instruction
Dec. 9 at the Hartford Ski Spectacular in Breckenridge.
Deasey had her leg amputated two years ago from osteogenic
sarcoma.
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on a ski slope. For disabled
people it is a chance to show they are up to a very physical challenge.
Seven-hundred skiers gathered at Breckenridge
last year at The Hartford Ski Spectacular to celebrate their ability
to go where many able-bodied people wouldn't.
"Most of the time, I can't keep up with
people. When I'm skiing, I can," said Erica Gannett, a 16-year-old
from Needham, Mass., who lost a leg to cancer.
"My friends said you could ski faster
than me when you had two legs and you can ski faster than me now,"
Gannett said. She started skiing when she was three. "Plus I
learned in the East, where there is a lot of ice."
Ted Kennedy Jr., whose right leg was amputated
because of bone cancer at age 12 in 1973, said in those days "people
felt that people with disabilities couldn't ski down a hill. The idea
that you could was foreign to them"
Hal O'Leary had only started teaching disabled
people to ski at Winter Park, the first such formal program, in 1970.
It celebrated its 30th anniversary this year and has given 25,000
lessons.
None of this stopped Kennedy. He lost his
leg in November, 2000, and in March was skiing again, becoming "a three-tracker."
Single amputees can ski on one ski aided with two outriggers.
Even Kennedy, a son of U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy,
marvels that paraplegics and quadriplegics now ski on bi- or mono
sit-skis, climbing on chairlifts and zooming down hills.
"People normally in wheelchairs are flying
down hills at 50 mph. It is a total freedom. Many of us live in this
slow-motion world."
Much of the credit for expanding the disabled
ski world goes to veterans of the Vietnam War who demanded access
to the slopes, said Sandy Trombetta, a recreation therapist at the
Grand Junction Veterans Hospital.
He has been running a program for disabled
veterans since 1979, hosted in recent years at Crested Butte. Most
ski areas now have programs for disabled skiers.
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