Over the weekend was the third-annual Alpine Race and Tetra Qualifier in northern Arizona, where athletes with disabilities compete for a spot at the finals in Utah.
Not only did this adaptive ski race give athletes a chance at an international title next month, but it also gave some participants a sense of autonomy.
“Tony, get ready to lose.” That’s 12-year-old Jaxton Mogensen from Mesa. He taunts his power soccer coach and vows to break his score. But this isn’t power soccer, this is adaptive skiing.
“On every right turn when I’m going to the left I’m going to push the joystick forward a little then I’m going to go around it,” Jaxton said.
He is strategizing with volunteers at the bef He sits in an electronic ski that makes this race possible for competitors with complex physical disabilities. He’s not directly competing with his coach, who leads in the adult category. But if Jaxton is faster, he will likely win the youth category, go to the championship, and get a chance to gloat.
“I will get 29 seconds,” Jaxton said.
It’s 39 degrees out the morning of the race at the Arizona Snowbowl. A nonprofit partner, High Country Adaptive, is putting on this race for the third time. The technology known as the TetraSki is relatively new.
“So there’s a computer in there attached to a joy stick or a 'sip and puff' and a student can independently turn that ski on their own with just that joy stick or just their breath depending on their level of physical limitations,” said Truman Shoaff with High Country.
Some competitors, like power soccer coach Tony Jackson, reconfigure the joystick to have more control.
“Because I have so many layers of clothes on, I can't use my arm to steer the TetraSki like I would with my power chair and so we have to with a lot of duct tape strap it to my chest and place it under my chin sideways to make it so I can steer it,” Jackson said.
Jackson lives in Phoenix and doesn’t have his own vehicle, so it’s hard to get up to Arizona Snowbowl to practice. But he placed third in his category at last year’s international championship in Utah.
“I have been using a power chair since childhood. I'm 48 now, and I never knew that skiing was something that I was going to be able to do, especially almost independently,” Jackson said.
And that was a big theme at this race — autonomy. Older technology like sit-skis, which are currently being used in the Paralympics, do allow people with physical limitations to ski and compete. But those with complex disabilities, like first-time competitor Ed McGuire, are left behind. Here’s his mother Colleen McGuire:
“For Ed, he has cerebral palsy and so he doesn't have a lot of control of his arms so a plain sit-ski you have to use your arms for balance and that kind of stuff. And he couldn’t go it by himself. But this, he feels like he has control,” she said.
Fun fact about Ed McGuire — he designed the Power Soccer chair, an adaptive sports equipment now used around the world.
Competitor Val Isaacs from California (who placed second in last year’s championships) has a similar view. She got a traumatic spinal cord injury in a car accident and uses a chair. She says the disability excludes her from many sports, even adaptive.
“Before the TetraSki I wasn't able to really enjoy it because I wasn't able to drive myself, the skiing,” Isaacs said. “I couldn't really decide where to turn, so it was still amazing cause they would put me on a bi ski and push me around and so you get to experience the snow, but there was also a little bit of frustration from going from doing races before to just being pushed.”
But there are further obstacles. Truman Shoaff says each TetraSki costs about $35,000. Also the technology, while independently functional, does require an instructor tethered behind the racer.
“There’s not a good enough stopping mechanism on it for it to be skied without a tetherer or an instructor attached to the ski. And then it costs so much that no one is just going to go willy nilly and buy a TetraSki. It [also] takes a four-day training just to start you off getting good at it,” Shoaff said.
High Country only recently acquired one of its own. For this race, the group relied on trained volunteers and other loaned TetraSkis.
Throughout the morning and early afternoon, competitors were timed as they went down the flagged course one by one.
The results are in. With Tony Jackson in first in the adult category, he is followed by Isaacs and then McGuire. And in youth, Truman announces that Jaxton not only won first, but had the “fastest time of the day," according to Shoaff, who had the official scores.
And now both get a chance at the championship.
Isaacs will also get a chance at the championship because she will be representing a different program. Shoaff says the rules are slightly lax because the sport is so new.
Again not directly competing, but Jaxton beat his coach’s time. And next month they may, unofficially, have a rematch.
