{"id":805174,"date":"2020-03-12T12:28:26","date_gmt":"2020-03-12T18:28:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=380395"},"modified":"2020-03-13T14:19:14","modified_gmt":"2020-03-13T20:19:14","slug":"summit-adaptive-snowboarders-have-whirlwind-experience-trying-to-return-from-europe-amid-travel-restrictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/summit-adaptive-snowboarders-have-whirlwind-experience-trying-to-return-from-europe-amid-travel-restrictions\/","title":{"rendered":"Summit adaptive snowboarders have whirlwind experience trying to return from Europe amid travel restrictions"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Adaptive Action Sports para snowboarder Kiana Clay of Dillon, seen here at Copper Mountain Resort in February 2019, is one of a group of seven Summit County locals trying to get back to the U.S. after the final World Para Snowboard World Cup event of the season in Norway was canceled due to coronavirus concerns.<\/strong>
Summit Daily file<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

FRISCO \u2014 Adaptive Action Sports co-founder Daniel Gale on Thursday drove a group of seven Summit County locals down the 783-kilometer seaside route from Lillehammer, Norway, to Copenhagen, Denmark. During the drive, Gale put into perspective what it\u2019s like for Americans abroad who are trying to get back to the States after President Donald Trump suspended all travel from Europe for the next 30 days beginning Friday.<\/p>\n

The past 24 hours has been a whirlwind for the group, which was in Hafjell, Norway, for this week\u2019s final World Para Snowboard World Cup event of the season. The remainder of the World Cup season was canceled Wednesday as concerns regarding the spread of the novel coronavirus \u2014 officially known as coronavirus disease 19, or COVID-19 \u2014 escalated following the World Health Organization\u2019s formal pandemic declaration.<\/p>\n

The cancellation came after a risk assessment of the World Para Snowboard World Cup and World Para Alpine World Cup in Hafjell by the local health authorities. The World Cup competitions originally were scheduled in Hafjell through Sunday.<\/p>\n

At first, the cancellation only meant no events would take place beyond Wednesday\u2019s dual banked slalom.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the news hit, everybody was kind of scrambling to figure out what was next,\u201d Gale said.<\/p>\n

Then at about 2 a.m. Lillehammer time, one of Adaptive Action Sports\u2019 snowboarders, Kiana Clay of Dillon, brought to Gale\u2019s attention that Trump had announced a suspension of all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days, set to go into effect at midnight Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo at 3 in the morning, we had a quick, impromptu team meeting, as I\u2019m sure many of the other teams did and certainly the rest of the (United States) team,\u201d Gale said. \u201cAnd we booked travel to fly out (Friday) at 6 a.m. \u2026 and we\u2019ll be back in (Denver via Frankfurt Friday) around 2:30 or 3 p.m.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should make it home no problem,\u201d Gale continued. \u201cI guess there is a little nervous energy as far as how things will look once we get there: What\u2019s customs going to look like, what kind of questions are we going to get asked, are they going to test us, are we at risk of quarantine \u2014 all of those things kind of are looming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gale said that even before Wednesday\u2019s cancellation, the coronavirus situation loomed over the World Cup event. Before the competition, Gale said the Norwegian government banned a few of the countries \u2014 Italy, Japan and Austria \u2014 from having their athletes participate. But after negotiations, Gale said, the Japanese athletes were permitted to compete, though Italian and Austrian athletes were forced to leave within 24 hours of arrival.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat kind of set the tone for the rest of the visit,\u201d Gale said. \u201cEveryone was a little bit on edge, and we as coaches and the athletes just tried to focus on the competition at hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for Wednesday\u2019s competition, Clay advanced to the upper-limb-impaired dual banked slalom small final, finishing in fourth place as the top Adaptive Action Sports female competitor behind fellow American Peggy Martin in second. On the men\u2019s side, Americans Noah Elliott and Mike Schultz finished first and second in the Lower Limb 1 division while Summit County athletes Zach Miller and Garrett Geros finished fifth and sixth in Lower Limb 2.<\/p>\n

Gale said the cancellation throws the 2020 Para Snowboard World Cup season into uncertainty, as the canceled boardercross races scheduled for the weekend were critical to many of the athletes and would have determined the winner of the seasonlong Crystal Globe title.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s unclear now for that actual sport, para boardercross, who will receive the globes or if they will even get awarded this year,\u201d Gale said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really unfortunate that this was kind of the way the season ended,\u201d Gale added. \u201cI think everyone who is involved in Adaptive Action Sports, we all have a passion for snowboarding, and we love it, and we hate to see something like this get in the way of allowing us to do what we love to do. We have to be leaving, but obviously we understand. \u2026 Something like this has an odd way of bringing everybody together, and all of the athletes and the coaches were extremely supportive of one another and making sure everybody was safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

Adaptive Action Sports para snowboarder Kiana Clay of Dillon, seen here at Copper Mountain Resort in February 2019, is one of a group of seven Summit County locals trying to get back to the U.S. after the final World Para Snowboard World Cup event of the season in Norway was canceled due to coronavirus concerns.Summit […]<\/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-805174","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-19 09:30:07","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\/805174","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=805174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":805240,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805174\/revisions\/805240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}