{"id":794837,"date":"2019-04-15T18:32:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-16T00:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/after-atv-accident-left-olympic-gold-medalist-amy-van-dyken-paralyzed-boec-helps-her-learn-to-love-skiing-again\/"},"modified":"2019-04-15T18:32:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-16T00:32:00","slug":"after-atv-accident-left-olympic-gold-medalist-amy-van-dyken-paralyzed-boec-helps-her-learn-to-love-skiing-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/after-atv-accident-left-olympic-gold-medalist-amy-van-dyken-paralyzed-boec-helps-her-learn-to-love-skiing-again\/","title":{"rendered":"After ATV accident left Olympic gold medalist Amy Van Dyken paralyzed, BOEC helps her learn to love skiing again"},"content":{"rendered":"
American Olympic champion swimmer Amy Van Dyken (seated) poses for a photograph on Breckenridge Ski Resort’s Peak 9 while skiing with the Breckenridge Outdoor Education Center’s Jeff Inouye (left) and Will Targy on Saurday in Breckenridge.<\/strong>
Antonio Olivero \/ aolivero@summitdaily.com<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As Amy Van Dyken rode up the Quicksilver Chairlift at Breckenridge Ski Resort on Saturday, she described her mindset in the wake of a 2014 ATV accident that left her paralyzed. And, while relaying her experience, the American Olympic champion swimmer caught herself mid-sentence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI kind of felt like I wanted to do everything,\u201d Van Dyken said. \u201cBut, at the same time, I knew that I was going to be limited \u2014 pardon me \u2014 I thought I was going to be limited.\u201d<\/p>\n

On June 6, 2014, Van Dyken, a native of Denver who won a combined six gold medals at the 1996 and 2000 Olympics, became paralyzed when her ATV careened over a 6-foot cliff near her home in Arizona. While riding up the chairlift at Breckenridge\u2019s Peak 9 on Saturday, Van Dyken recalled how the ATV fell on her twice during the accident. The nature of the accident resulted in a Flight For Life helicopter transporting Van Dyken to a trauma center, as one of her vertebra nearly punctured her aorta.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy doctor actually told me later that he shut down that trauma center and any trauma center he could have been called to,\u201d Van Dyken said. \u201cAnd I thought it was because I won gold medals and he was like, \u2018No, it was because it was that bad.\u2019 It was that close to being a pretty life-threatening type of deal. So that\u2019s what happened. But, here I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here Van Dyken was on Saturday seated in a sit-ski on the Quicksilver chairlift at Breckenridge, riding alongside Jeff Inouye and Will Targy of the Breckenridge Outdoor Education Center. It was Inouye who three years ago convinced Van Dyken to give skiing with the BOEC a try after her accident. A lifelong athlete, Van Dyken and her husband, former Denver Broncos punter Tom Rouen, had skied routinely at Keystone Resort before the accident via their ski-in, sit-out home. But, after the ATV accident, Van Dyken initially doubted Inouye\u2019s idea she\u2019d be able to ski again.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a little depression,\u201d Van Dyken said of the aftermath of the injury. \u201cI made my life with my body. And, now, all of a sudden I thought it was less than.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Van Dyken said she soon learned \u201cit was not less than.\u201d Not soon after the accident, she picked up CrossFit. With the help of Inouye, she skied again, via a BOEC sit-ski set up. Van Dyken has also taken up rock climbing and water skiing, as well. And, in a few months, she\u2019ll compete at the CrossFit Games.<\/p>\n

As for returning to the mountains, when Van Dyken first tried skiing three years ago with Inouye and the BOEC, she said, she felt free again as an atlete. One of the country\u2019s greatest all-time swimmers, Van Dyken was candid in sharing that when she returned to the water after her accident, she didn\u2019t feel that same sporting sensibility. Returning to the snow, on the other hand, felt special.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so interesting,\u201d Van Dyken said. \u201cPeople say when you are paralyzed to go in the pool and you feel free and you feel light. But when I got on the mountain, that\u2019s where I feel free and light and fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

This past weekend, Van Dyken spent three days with the BOEC continuing to sharpen her sit-skiing skills, something she\u2019s done each of the past three years. In terms of relearning how to ski, Van Dyken said though it\u2019s been a learning curve, the principles of sit-skiing are very similar to having success in the pool. And, for her, it\u2019s centered around not trying too hard physically.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you start swimming you think you need to muscle through it,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd then, when you figure out you actually need to relax most of your stroke, that\u2019s what most of the best swimmers do. It\u2019s the same thing in skiing. So I\u2019ve been applying that a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s progressing so well that Van Dyken said that Saturday was her first post-ski morning waking up without soreness in her forearms. She credited it to the BOEC\u2019s helping her realize she needed to chill out more in her approach to sit-skiing. But, on a sit-ski, that\u2019s sometimes easier said than done. Inouye explained how an athlete like Van Dyken is controlling everything from the waist up. With that, it can feel like all of that upper-body and core control comes down to raw strength and muscling the sit-ski around. But once they start to relax and let the ski do what it\u2019s designed to do, all they need to do is put their body in the right position.<\/p>\n

As Inouye and Targy trailed Van Dyken on the Silverthorne ski trail on Saturday, Van Dyken was doing just that. She smiled all the way down the mountain not only content with this newest chapter in her athletic life, but thriving within it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do more now than I did when I was able-bodied,\u201d Van Dyken said. \u201cBecause, if I failed before, people would be like, \u2018Oh, I thought you were an athlete.\u2019 Where, now, they say, \u2018good for you for trying, honey!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

American Olympic champion swimmer Amy Van Dyken (seated) poses for a photograph on Breckenridge Ski Resort’s Peak 9 while skiing with the Breckenridge Outdoor Education Center’s Jeff Inouye (left) and Will Targy on Saurday in Breckenridge.Antonio Olivero \/ aolivero@summitdaily.com As Amy Van Dyken rode up the Quicksilver Chairlift at Breckenridge Ski Resort on Saturday, she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-794837","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-20 21:37:25","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}