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Nationwide Ski Tour off to a ‘Spectacular’ Start
By Brady Delander A smile stretched across Steffini Vandever's
face expressed everything that could be said about the
20th annual Hartford Ski Spectacular, held December 2-9
at Beaver Run Resort in Breckenridge, Colorado. And the proud
mother wasn't even on skis. Instead, she watched and beamed as her
son, Jonah, made careful turns down the slopes standing on his
prostheses.
 It was the perfect way for Jonah to spend his
tenth birthday.
"Doctors said he would probably never walk," Vandever said of
Jonah, who at 18 months old underwent bilateral knee
disarticulation amputations. "He walked across the living room with
stitches in the bottom of his stumps, and he's been taking off ever
since."
The Vandevers were two of the estimated 800 participants, family
members, sponsors, and instructors on hand for the eight-day event,
which featured adaptive ski instruction and certification, disabled
ski races, members of the Wounded Warrior Project (WWP), and young
prodigies hoping to make the U.S. Disabled Ski Team.
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Carl Burnett competes in the giant slalom at The Hartford Ski Spectacular in 2006. |
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"The Hartford Ski Spectacular has a national
impact," said Kirk Bauer, executive director of Disabled Sports USA
(DS/USA), not long after a few runs down the mountain. "We are
training 150 instructors how to teach adaptive sports, and they go
back to their own communities and 20 or 30 ski areas around the
country and are able to offer higher quality instruction because of
what they learned here."
Bauer said there were about 60 members of the Professional Ski
Instructors of America National Academy on site to give lessons and
another 125 DS/USA staff and volunteers to keep the show
running.
John Jones, national spokesman for WWP and a bilateral
transtibial amputee, was one of a number of featured speakers
tapped by Bauer to share their inspirational stories.
"Eight weeks after my amputation, Kirk called me and asked what
I was doing," Jones said. "I told him, 'I'm sit ting here kicking
my nubs, what do you think I'm doing?' And he goes, 'Hey, let's go
ski.'" Jones protested at first, saying he couldn't stand up, let
alone ski. But Bauer insisted and eventually set up Jones in a
mono-ski. In Breckenridge, Jones mentored Jonah Vandever, and
neither wasted any time heading back to the lift after each run.
"I'm going again," Jonah said.
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Laurie Stephens competes at The Hartford Ski Spectacular in 2006. |
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The second half of the week featured elite
disabled skiers from around the country, including Adam Hall of New
Zealand, the winner of the slalom and giant slalom events for
standing males. Other events, for men and women, included both
slalom races for those in ski chairs as well as the visually
impaired.
Bauer said The Hartford Ski Spectacular was the first of a
nationwide ski tour that will make 32 stops. That's enough to keep
the Vietnam veteran busy through the winter, but he has big plans
after the snow melts. "We want to...beef up the summer activities."
Bauer said. "We want there to be adaptive programs in all regions
of the country where people don't have to drive more than a couple
of hours to get there."
The final results are available here as a
downloadable pdf. 
Table Of Contents - January 2008
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