WinterSports2002.com, Monday, March 11, 2002
One push to gold
Mono-skier triumphs in super-G at Snowbasin
By Ray Grass
Deseret News outdoor editor
SNOWBASIN — Chris Devlin-Young plays a game with his best friend and mono-ski companion, Kevin Bramble, called "One Push."
The rules are simple: One push at the top of the mountain, then anything goes and the first to the bottom wins. It is, he said, an all-out battle of speed.
Sunday, they played a variation of that game . . . and Devlin-Young won. But this time instead of bragging rights, it was for a gold medal in the men's super-G in the Paralympics. Bramble fell before he could reach the bottom.
It's doubtful, however, it would have mattered. On Saturday, in the opening day of the Paralympics competition, Bramble beat Devlin-Young to the downhill gold.
Finishing second, said Devlin-Young, from Compton, N.H., didn't sit well with him in this friendly game.
"(Yesterday) I did everything like I was supposed to, but as we know, perfect isn't always fast. I had to turn up the volume, somewhere in the range where you start to get hearing loss," he expressed at the finish, draped in an American flag and flanked by well-wishers.
"I had to be the one that wanted it the most, and boy, did I ever want it. This is my best event and this was the best race of my life."
The win actually put Devlin-Young in the record books. He became the first disabled skier to win gold medals in two divisions — in the stand-up slalom in 1994 and now in the sit-ski super-G in 2002.
Devlin-Young's path to disabled skiing started when he was involved in a plane crash in Alaska while flying for the U.S. Coast Guard in 1982.
He was, at the time, an angry young man of 21 who had grown up on the beaches of California.
One day, his therapist asked him if he's like to go skiing. "I said, 'What's skiing?' On the second turn I knew this was it. I had my life back. I got the wind in my hair again, and I got away from the feeling of being half a man, from being in a wheelchair. I've been able to get rid of all the anger, but I haven't gotten rid of all the frustrations of being in a wheelchair. But I'm not angry anymore. Today is proof of that."
This is the fourth Paralympics he has qualified for. Two of them, however, he did not compete in — Albertville, France, and Nagano, Japan. But he did in Lillehammer, Norway, and it changed his life. During training for the downhill, his ski came off and he broke his leg below the knee. Because he has no feeling below the knee, however, he couldn't feel the pain. That evening, however, it swelled up "like a balloon." He did not ski in the downhill but did in the super-G, giant slalom and, on the final day, won his gold as a stand-up skier in the slalom.
"His doctor told him that his injury was serious enough that if he ever wanted to ski again, he'd have to put himself in a mono-ski," said his wife, Donna.
He took a year off, learned to use a mono-ski and returned to the U.S. Disabled Ski Team in 1996. He admitted, however, that things were not going well, that he felt stagnant, so he left the team and started the New England Disabled Ski Team. Last year he returned for his 15th year as a disabled skier.
Things did not go as well for other U.S. skiers. Devlin-Young's medal was the only one won by Americans on Sunday.
Bramble, from Truckee, Calif., fell on the Wildflower course, as did local favorite Chris Waddell of Park City. Waddell won a silver in the downhill in the mono-ski LW10 class.
Jacob Rife of Pocatello, a bronze medalist in the stand-up downhill, finished about three-tenths of a second out of a medal in the super-G.
Martin Braxenthaler of Germany won his second gold in two days — the downhill on Saturday and the super-G on Sunday, in the mono-ski LW10 class.
Other double-gold winners are Rolf Heinzmann of Switzerland among those with disabilities in the arm and hand; Michael Milton of Australia in the leg amputee class; and Gerd Schoenfelder of Germany among those with disabilities of both arms or hands.
Devlin-Young is the only U.S. skiers with two medals after two days.
The super-G for those with visual disabilities and for women was scheduled for Monday. The alpine events will skip Tuesday but will resume on Wednesday with the men's giant slalom at Snowbasin.
E-MAIL: grass@desnews.com
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