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our years ago, Pittsfield’s Spencer Wood was about to compete in his first Paralympic Games. Back then, he was a sophomore at the University of Colorado-Boulder, a guy with a big smile who was eager to prove himself on the world stage. But he had only recently discovered Paralympic skiing, and the 2018 Winter Paralympic Games in PyeongChang did not go as he had hoped. Much has changed for Wood in the past four years. He is now a college graduate, and his confidence has soared. At the most recent Para Snow Sports World Championships in January, Wood was the second American in the downhill and super-G results. He also scored a top-10 performance in super-G at a WPAS World Cup in Sweden at the end of January. Then in early March, Wood was back for another go at a medal, one of 736 Paralympians competing at the Olympic venues in China in 78 events. So, what made the difference for the 25-year-old Vermonter?
KILLINGTON’S PARALYMPIAN GROWING UP IN KILLINGTON WITH PARENTS WHO WERE SKI INSTRUCTORS, SPENCER WOOD QUICKLY LEARNED TO SKI FAST. AT THE 2022 BEIJING PARALYMPICS, HE WANTED TO SHOW THE WORLD JUST HOW FAST. BY PEGGY SHINN
THE SKI TOWN HOPEFUL First, some background. Wood’s parent were ski instructors at Killington, and they had Spencer and his older sister on skis around the time they could walk and soon racing gates. Spencer didn’t learn he had a disability until he was 10. He had a left-brain stroke in utero, which left him with right-side hemiparesis (permanent weakness and muscle deficits on his right side). His parents held off telling him because they wanted him to adapt to his physical impairment without using it as an excuse. They finally told him when he wanted to try out for the baseball team. “When I was in fourth grade I wondered why I wasn’t progressing in sports, then my parents told me I was disabled,” Wood said. “I run with a limp so my right side challenges are more pronounced in sports that include running,” he told The Mountain Times in 2014. On skis though, Wood looked like any other kid, “Skiing was something that came so naturally to me being a Vermonter and growing up in a ski town,” he said. “It seemed totally normal to just to go out and rip with your friends and see who could be the fastest one down the hill.” When he was a high school junior at the Killington Mountain School, Wood’s coaches suggested that he try Para skiing. KMS coach Greg Hadley had worked in the adaptive ski world and knew it could be a gateway to bigger things for Wood. Wood was classified as LW4, the same classification for
Wood onsite in China, getting ready for his Paralympic runs. Photo curtesy Spencer Woo
standing skiers with a below-the-knee amputation, and he finished fifth in his first Para alpine race. That was January 2015, and Wood has never looked back. While he was in college at Boulder, he trained at the National Sports Center for the Disabled in Winter Park. But the PyeongChang Paralympic Winter Games did not go as Wood had hoped. Competing against legends like seven-time Paralympic medalist Aleksei Bugaev from Russia, Wood finished 25th in the giant slalom, and he did not finish the second run of slalom. “After being 20 seconds out in PyeongChang, I was not feeling too hot,” he confessed. The following November, Wood was reclassified as LW9-2 after a board of doctors took his right arm deficiencies into account. He competed on the Paraski circuit in three Europa
Cup races immediately after the reclassification and finished on the podium in the last one. He was happy to finally see his hard work pay off. Two months later, Wood scored his first Paraski World Cup podium — third in a slalom on his birthday. Even better, he was only 1.2 seconds behind American Thomas Walsh, a two-time bronze medalist at the 2019 Para World Championships. Wood has yet to beat his friend Walsh in a race (the two men both attended ski racing academies in Vermont and are friends). But don’t ask Wood to compare himself to his friend. Three-time Paralympic gold medalist Alana Nichols once advised Wood not to compare himself to other athletes. “You’re only limiting how much you can improve,” Wood remembered Nichols telling him. “Compare yourself to yourself.”
A NEW OUTLOOK The major turning point for Wood came this past summer. He had just graduated from CU-Boulder with a degree in communications and was at summer training camps in Europe. “I was like, I can’t be going to the next Games feeling like this,” he thought. “I can’t have regrets in the start again.” So he returned to the U.S. and moved into the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, where he mountain biked, worked out, ate, and slept. Every day, he found inspiration looking at the “ginormous” American flag that hangs in the training center. “It was a solid six weeks of pain cave,” he said. “I really needed it for my mental health, and it was fantastic.” While working out at the OTC, he also thought of one of his good friends who had passed away earlier in the summer from a fentanyl overdose. It made Wood realize that he could not take any day for granted. “It upped my game and really helped me focus in on what my goals were, how hard I want to achieve those goals, how badly I need to achieve them because I just have had so many years of mediocrity,” said Wood. “And I just can’t stand for that anymore.” Wood also began working with a sports psychologist who suggested he try something new in his workout routine every day. As he trained at the OTC, Wood kept asking himself, “Can I work a little harder on the mountain bike? Can I get my form a little more explosive in the gym? Can I eat more food? Sleep longer?” At this season’s first Para NorAm races in Panorama, British Columbia, in December Wood finished no lower than fifth and podiumed twice. Wood then traveled to Switzerland for the first Para World Cup races but suffered a concussion in training. After recovering, then training again at home in Vermont over the holidays, Wood headed to Europe again for World Championships in Lillehammer, Norway, where he scored a series of top 20 finishes in downhill, super-G, and combined. At the Beijing Paralympics, Wood planned to compete in all five alpine disciplines: slalom, GS, super-G, downhill, and combined, with his best chances coming in the speed events. “My goal,” he continued, “is to not really focus on the result but just focus on how much improvement I have made and be happy, be content that my finish is as good as I could have gotten and that I did everything I could to make my family and my nation proud.”
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