Who says you need working legs to go mountain biking? Canadian Stacy Kohut broke his back in 1992, but has never let his lack of lower body mobility hold him back.
In fact, if anything this born competitor has achieved even more in the years since his accident. In winter, he’s won multiple medals as a sit-skier, taking gold at the 1994 Lillehammer Paralympics and three silvers at the 1998 Nagano Games.
Meanwhile his summers have been spent wheelchair skateboarding and pushing the sport of Fourcross – the four-wheeled downhill mountain-bike style discipline shown here.
Fourcross is relatively unusual in that it’s one of the few sports in which able-bodied and disabled athletes can compete side-by-side.
“Fourcross racing is coolest sport I have ever done. Period,” Stacy told newdisability.com recently. For a man who competed as a BMX racer, a skateboarder a mountain biker and a skier before his accident, that means a lot.
“Fourcross racing is coolest sport I have ever done. Period.”
“The sport was invented in the late 80’s to early 90’s,” Stacy continues. “[and] the pioneer builder, John Castellano, was able bodied.
“For me, all it took was one look at the size of the smile he had on his face when he was riding the four-wheeler to realize that this sport was for everyone. Able bodied and disabled alike.”
And if that – and this latest movie by Whistler based Ricci Films – isn’t enough to make you want to give it a go, then I don’t know what is.
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