by Jennifer Johnson We dive not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.” – Anonymous An instructor at Mount Madonna Institute once told me, “Don’t be in such a hurry to get where you are going that you forget to meet yourself where you are at.” As I sit on a stone wall at the Casino Point Dive Park...
When all the gyms shut down way back in COVID’s initial quarantine phase, Move United (then known as Disabled Sports USA) whipped up an ad hoc set of online adaptive workouts called Adapt At Home. A year and a half later, the gyms are (mostly) open again, but the demand for convenient fitness options is...
If the Paralympic athletes sponsored by Össur and Ottobock were regarded as independent nations, both teams would have ranked among the top 20 in the overall medal count among the 162 countries that attended the 2021 Tokyo Games. Put the two together, and they piled up more gold medals than all but eight other entrants....
Hardly anyone remembers the name of the first person who ever played college football in NCAA Division I on a prosthetic leg. Do you?
We’ve been fans of Aristotle Domingo’s AmpuTO podcast since he launched it last year. So we were thrilled to land a guest spot for Episode #1 of the show’s new season. It just went live yesterday; you can tune in here. In addition to being one of Canada’s strongest advocates for people with limb loss...
Now that the Paralympics have gotten the sort of coverage they always deserved, does anybody still doubt whether these events are compelling enough to hold an audience? Not every storyline lived up to its billing, but enough of them did to make for a show that always entertained and frequently achieved high drama. Here are...
Team USA’s final medal Paralympic medal count ended up at 104, with 37 golds. Both figures rank as the second-highest in history, surpassed only by the 115 medals and 40 golds the Americans won five years ago in Rio. Amputee athletes made up about a third of Team USA’s overall Paralympic contingent, and they brought...
Through 1992, the Winter and Summer Olympic/Paralympics were always held in the same calendar year. It was only in 1994 that the IOC modified the schedule to create a staggered cycle, with Summer Games during leap years and Winter Games two years later. Because of the one-year pandemic delay, the calendar has temporarily reverted to...
Amputees and other people with disabilities will play football this fall as the nine-team USA Wheelchair Football League makes its debut.
While Jessica Long was winning gold in the 200m individual medley (SM8) the other day—her fourth consecutive Paralympic gold in that event over a 14-year period—another pretty big story unfolded under the radar. Eighteen-year-old US swimmer Haven Shepherd finished 5th in that race, the first Paralympic event of her career, and she came within a...
Amputee athlete Katie Holloway fought doggedly to raise Paralympic athletes' medal bonuses to the same level as Olympic athletes. Here's what it took for her to succeed.
Amputee athlete Femita Ayanbeku surprised everyone, including herself, by making the 2016 Paralympic team. For the 2020 Paralympics, no one will be surprised if she brings home a medal.
Who's the youngest amputee athlete on the US Paralympic team? Who's got the most medals? How many are first-time Paralympians? Test your knowledge in our quiz.
Not every amputee is lucky enough to have a devoted workout buddy or personal trainer. So how do you stay motivated and accountable when you’re on your own?
Think you’re too out of shape to get active as an amputee? You might think again after viewing our photos from last weekend's Össur Mobility Clinic.
We combed US athletes' Instagram feeds to get a sense of their highs and lows in the wake of the Paralympic Trials. Here's a sampling of their reaction.
The Paralympics have evolved from a modest archery exhibition involving 16 British soldiers into the world's third-largest sporting event.
Amputee athlete Trenten Merrill thinks athletes and fans would benefit from a joint national meet that brings Olympians and Paralympians together in a single venue.
The Tokyo Paralympics are part of a larger, more important story: the normalization of limb difference and the changing cultural perceptions of disability.
These six amputee athletes have a lot at stake during this week’s US Paralympic Trials. They're not well known yet—but they might be after the Tokyo Games conclude.
Iraq War veteran and three-time Paralympian Melissa Stockwell sees a lot of overlap between the duty to promote American values and the duty to raise amputees’ visibility.
Amputee athlete Desmond Jackson is blazing trails and advancing the cause of cultural inclusion for amputees, people with disabilities, and people of color.
In an exclusive interview, NBC Olympics president Gary Zenkel discusses the trends driving the network's beefed-up coverage of the Tokyo Paralympic Games.
Not many Paralympic sprinters have also starred in a Pulitzer Prize-winning play. That’s the remarkable journey of Katy Sullivan, a bilateral amputee who always viewed herself as an actor until her life took an unplanned detour into track and field.
From mountains to sea, intrepid amputees are getting active everywhere. Taking up an outdoor activity during summer can be a great way to experience improved overall health and wellness.
Paralympic athlete Ezra Frech believes passionately that adaptive sports can empower all people with disabilities and help everyone—even non-athletes—feel like a champion.
Has it really only been 11 months since Disabled Sports USA and Adaptive Sports USA merged to create Move United? Seems like it’s been longer than that; the new organization has been very busy. They’ll keep the momentum going and mark their first anniversary next month with the 2021 Move United Education Conference. This virtual...
Melissa Stockwell was part of the first wave of US Paralympians to demonstrate the marketing potential of adaptive athletes. Here's why advertisers are increasingly apt to see the Paralympics as a great marketing opportunity.
Get great gear at a great price while you support Team USA's amputee skiers. Adaptive Spirit's virtual silent auction is open through April 8. Get your bids down while you still can.
Amputee Blade Runners providesfree running prostheses to individuals (especially kids and adolescents) who would otherwise lack access to one.
Above-elbow amputee Matt Meredith has written his own how-to manual for backcountry skiing, while tuning out the doubts of able-bodied skiers who consider the sport too dangerous for an adaptive athlete.
He won’t turn 16 until May, but Ezra Frech already has a higher profile than most Paralympic athletes. As the co-founder of Angel City Sports, Frech (rhymes with “tech”) has helped open doors to athletic opportunity for thousands of people with limb difference and other disabilities. After grabbing silver medals in the long jump and...
Melissa Stockwell was supposed to be six months into retirement from athletics by now, focused on family and business and (ideally) basking in the glow of a Tokyo gold medal. When the 2020 Games were pushed back by a year due to COVID, she briefly entertained the idea of sticking with Plan A—retiring on schedule,...
Roughly half of adult amputees don't participate in sports. And when you stay on the sidelines, physical fitness isn't the only thing that suffers. Mental health takes a hit, too.
Barely two years after losing both legs to an IED in Afghanistan, Colton Carlson made headlines by reaching the top of Aconcagua (the highest peak in South America) with a team of wounded warriors. As the only bilateral amputee in the group, Carlson impressed his fellow climbers with an effort variously described as “Herculean,” “superhuman,”...
As the National Basketball Association prepares to resume its season tomorrow night after a 20-week pandemic pause, we can’t think of a better person to preview the playoffs than Troy Druppal. A youth coach for the Golden State Warriors Basketball Academy, Druppal knows all too well what it’s like to play basketball through a health...
The US Olympic and Paralympic Museum was originally supposed to open back in May, about a month before the Olympic and Paralympic Trials and three months (give or take) before the Tokyo Games. For reasons we needn’t rehash, the opening got delayed and the Games got postponed. We’re still a year out from the (now)...
Despite the virtual format for the 2020 Endeavor Games, the jitters Anthony Quinn felt before he ran his race were very real.
Given that most pro and amateur athletes remain sidelined by the pandemic, June is shaping up as a surprisingly active month on the adaptive sports calendar.
It takes a lot of equipment to get to the top of Cotopaxi, one of the highest peaks in South America at 19,347 feet. Even elite mountaineers can’t get there without crampons, poles, axes, ropes and a whole lot more. If you happen to use a prosthetic leg in addition—well, that’s just another piece of...
Born without her left arm below the elbow, Kaitlin Heatherly struggled with shaky confidence and low self-esteem until very recently.
When we spoke to Lacey Henderson back on March 19, the Paralympics were still supposedly going to be held on schedule in August 2020. She no longer had a place to train, though—her regular training facility had closed a few days earlier—and all the spring qualifying meets had been called off.
We got a lot of positive feedback last month on Angie Heuser’s first-person story about learning to surf. So we asked her if we could share another episode from her life — this time about the trials of her first 10K race post-amputation. Both articles come from her blog, Stepping Out in Faith. Thanks, Angie,...
Throughout 2020, Amplitude will be providing ongoing coverage of U.S. amputees competing for slots on the U.S. Paralympic Team. Check in regularly for video profiles, athlete interviews, on-the-spot reporting and a complete preview of the Tokyo Games. Here’s a brief teaser: