When you think of the Paralympics, you think of athletes who are disabled.
But that changes when you meet disabled athlete and Paralympic advocate Nicole Roundy. Frankly, she’s nothing short of superabled.
Nicole, a childhood cancer survivor, above-the-knee amputee, medal-winning snowboarder and wakeboarder, is now focused on conquering her next challenge: Getting adaptive snowboarding into the 2014 Paralympics. “Money is so tight, and on the disabled side of things it’s even tighter,” she says. “There’s just not much funding for adaptive athletes to train and compete.”
But having just won a silver medal in France at the Para World Cup, Nicole is more determined than ever to see her sport make it. “Even though I’m ready to move on from competing and focus on my career, I just can’t walk away from this sport with the way it is. There are too many riders who need the opportunity. But before they get involved in competitions, they need to have an ultimate goal to strive for.”
And according to Nicole, that’s the chance to win a Paralympic gold medal.
But she knows gold-medal dreams have to start with accessible training for adaptive athletes.
“If you’ve never had the opportunity to train, you can’t compete and advance the sport,” she said. “And training facilities for adaptive athletes are really hard to come by.”
Which is one of the reasons Nicole favors Park City Mountain Resort. “They [the resort] built a boardercross course and that is incredibly helpful. They also have a terrain park and halfpipe that can’t be beat and those help adaptive boarders who want to pursue slopestyle events and superpipe competitions.”
These features at PCMR are not specific to adaptive athletes anyone can use them but Nicole says just the fact that they exist and are so accessible is a huge opportunity for adaptive athletes. “It gives athletes a chance to run the course and figure out if it’s even something they want to do. And if it is, it gives them an opportunity to train and stick with it,” she says.
Nicole started competitive boarding in 2006 after enrolling in a clinic just two years before. She tried skiing first, but quickly realized it wasn’t for her. “I have metal plates and screws in my left knee from a motorcycle wreck and I don’t like risking the turns of skiing. And with the way that technology and prosthetics have evolved, it’s actually easier for adaptive athletes to snowboard.”
Nicole is a member of the first adaptive snowboard team formed in the U.S. She trains with the Team Utah and is supported by the National Ability Center.
“The U.S. has the largest adaptive snowboarding population in the world, but until recently it didn’t have a team. Now that we do, we need funding to keep going and to be officially recognized.”
And that’s part of the reason Nicole started an online blog: adaptivesnow.org. She says it gives the eight countries actively participating in adaptive boarding a voice. And it gives readers the ability to see how much their donations mean to the athletes.
“This is my small contribution to giving back to a sport that has given so much to me. Learning to board and then compete gave me confidence and an outlet to be a better person. My hope is that all adaptive athletes get the same chances I did.”
As for the massive uphill battle she faces to get adaptive snowboarding added as a Paralympic event, she says: “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It is an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It is a dare. Impossible is potential.”
No doubt, with Nicole Roundy leading the charge, the possibilities are endless.
Amy Roberts is a freelance writer, public-relations guru and globe-trotting thrill seeker. In a former life she worked in TV news, both as a reporter and sports anchor. She has bagged peaks on six continents, kayaked the Zambezi and Nile rivers, swam with great white sharks in South Africa and tracked mountain gorillas in Rwanda. She was once very nearly sold for 2,000 camels while traveling through Morocco.