With Use of Only One particular Arm, a Snowboarder Speeds to Good results

When Kiana Clay rides a chairlift, she always sits on the remaining side of the seat so she can use her one particular operating arm to force off at the top rated. Once there, she methods onto her snowboard, points down the mountain and picks up velocity.

A ton of it.

She has racked up a number of major finishes as she aims to compete in the 2022 Paralympics in Beijing and lately grew to become the initial para snowboarder to be signed by the Burton Crew, 1 of the greatest-recognized in snowboarding and whose associates have integrated Olympians like Kelly Clark, Chloe Kim and Shaun White.

“What struck me with Kiana right absent is that she saw how her operate may well gain other folks,” explained Donna Carpenter, proprietor of the Burton snowboarding organization, which sponsors the team. “She’s got that single-minded dedication, the eye of the tiger that you can recognize in a excellent athlete.’’

Carpenter initial acquired of Clay when she spoke at a countrywide sportswomen meeting a couple of decades ago and was captivated.

“Her speech was so potent coming out of this minor package deal,” Carpenter said. “When she talked about refinding her objective with snowboarding and the perception of flexibility it brought her, I was like, we have to hook up.”

Clay getting in the subsequent Paralympics is significantly from a certainty but not due to the fact of her performance. Her class, woman snowboarders with upper limb disabilities, is not scheduled to appear in the Paralympics until eventually the 2026 Game titles in northern Italy, because of an inadequate pool of competition. But Clay, 26, is major a petition to include the division to the 2022 Beijing Video games.

“We actually need that class in the next Games,” she claimed. “If there is a little woman devoid of an upper limb who thinks she’s a lot less than, or not able of carrying out anything, it’s about encouraging the future era, building that foreseeable future likelihood.”

Contests operate by Entire world Para Snowboarding, the intercontinental governing entire body for the activity, include this category for girls, and Clay is a single of just a handful of American feminine athletes competing in the group on the international level. Quite a few other nations, such as China, have many feminine snowboarders in the upper limb course.

“It’s the premier class on the men’s side of the activity and it’s rising on the women’s side,” stated Daniel Gale, executive director of Adaptive Action Sports activities, a Colorado-based firm that steers people with disabilities to motion sports and aided get snowboarding into the 2014 Paralympics in Russia. “Had it not been for Covid interrupting our season very last calendar year, we would have experienced the option for these gals to show that the quantities are there.”

At close of 2020, Clay ranked ninth in the planet in her classification and was the major American, while she is new to the sport and only has a handful of competitions beneath her belt. She narrowly missed the podium, positioning fourth, in her most recent Planet Cup event previous calendar year.

She is schooling for a handful of domestic snowboarding competitions, bowing out of worldwide occasions this period for the reason that of fears about traveling for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic. She trains at the fitness center 6 times a 7 days, snowboards with Adaptive Motion Sporting activities at the very least three days a 7 days and consistently fulfills with a sports psychologist and nutritionist. Thanks to signing on with Burton, she was equipped to quit two of the 3 work opportunities she had, working now at a local sandwich shop.

Clay has followed a circuitous route to the sport.

Growing up in San Diego, she identified velocity by whatever implies feasible — biking, skateboarding, in-line skating. She received her initially motorbike at age 7 and was racing motocross as she neared her teenagers. It was an period when women’s motocross was at its peak, and she was racing all-around the country, finishing in the best a few among girls and boys in her class.

Then, at age 12, competing on a rainy working day in Texas, she crashed when her bike slid out around a jump. Another racer’s front wheel landed on her neck. Clay awoke on a stretcher to explore she experienced no use of her suitable, dominant arm.

She experienced experienced a neck harm called brachial plexus. A number of weeks later, Clay and her father were hit by a drunken driver and their truck flipped. Any hope to recuperate some use of her arm vanished, even immediately after a 14-hour nerve graft technique.

She uncovered to compose with her left hand, perform movie games with her toes and how to make a ponytail with the help of a doorknob. She expended all of junior significant and substantial faculty making an attempt just about every type of activity and action — monitor, art, choir, cheerleading — straining to redefine herself and to envision a long run other than the one she experienced pictured as a expert motocross racer. Nothing at all produced her coronary heart sing.

It wasn’t right until higher education at Dallas Baptist University that Clay received again on a motorcycle.

“I observed myself consistently going back again to the filth monitor,” she explained. “One of my good friends said, ‘Why never we rig up a pit bicycle that you can ride with 1 hand?’ That bike did not cease for 8 or 9 several hours. I went via 3 cans of fuel. I even now experienced that sensation on the observe, this mad feeling of peace. I phone it my throttle treatment. If I hadn’t gotten again on the bicycle, I wouldn’t have gotten into snowboarding.”

Phrase unfold about the 5-foot-2, one particular-armed woman racing dirt bikes.

Adaptive Action Sports activities invited Clay to Colorado to try snowboarding. It was the to start with time she had been on a board considering that she was a compact youngster.

“The working day I satisfied Kiana, possessing recognised her background and observing videos using her bicycle, I believed she experienced the precise appropriate perspective to be a aggressive snowboarder,” Gale, of Adaptive Action Sports activities, explained. “As we’ve traveled down this road, she’s fallen much more and a lot more in enjoy with the sport. She’s discovering her spot in the snowboard society, getting her footing as an athlete and studying a good deal about herself and what she’s capable of.”

Clay has been working with Burton’s designers on strengthening equipment for these with actual physical disabilities.

Utilizing her input, designers have established custom made boots that Cl
ay can tighten without the need of a drawstring and jackets with diagonal zippers that can be quickly managed with just one hand and that includes a one left sleeve, since Clay rides with her suitable arm strapped tightly to her body under the jacket.

Except her arm is pinned down, it “would flap all-around like a flag,” Clay said, hindering her harmony whilst driving and racing. The inactive arm provides other risks, too. After a current filth bicycle crash in which she went in excess of the handlebars, Clay found her appropriate hand turning black and blue a pair times afterwards. When she went to the doctor, she learned her wrist was broken.

She is hoping to have the arm amputated below the elbow this 12 months.

“Getting that added fat off, I see a good deal of gains and substantial improvement possible as an athlete,” she said.

Clay explained she hopes other individuals, disabled or not, find her hard work in the sport inspiring.

“The mark I’d like to depart is not only for disabled people, but for each human to fully grasp that the only limitation they have is by themselves,” she said. “I want to help people see beyond them selves, what their possible is and what they’re capable of if they are inclined to place in the work.”