Schultz ending Paralympic snowboarding career to focus on building prosthetic gear for top athletes

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CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — American Para snowboarder Mike Schultz is putting an end to his competitive days at the Paralympics.

The Minnesota native will go behind the scenes to work fulltime making the prosthetic equipment that has helped so many Para athletes — including some of those who beat him this week at the Milan Cortina Games.

Seeing his business thrive from up close has helped Schultz — a three-time Paralympic medalist — go into retirement with greater peace of mind.

“It’s pretty awesome to look back at my career, and all these athletes out here using the equipment I built,” he said. “Being a big part of the prosthetic performance for pretty much every other lower-limb amputee that’s racing here today using the equipment I built in my shop. So I can hold my head high, you know, big picture. I’m loving it. I’m loving it.”

The 44-year-old Schultz began building his own prosthetic equipment after an accident while competing in a professional snowcross race in 2008. He flew off his snowmobile after drifting off the course and landed on his left leg, sustaining a severe compound fracture to his knee. After several surgeries, his leg was amputated above the knee.

He wanted to get back to motocross and snowmobile racing but soon found out there was nothing that would really allow him to ride the way he did before his amputation.

Always into the mechanics of things — his father taught him to weld when he was 10 — Schultz began developing equipment that could absorb the amount of impact needed for action sports. It didn’t take long before he realized that many other amputee athletes could benefit from his equipment. In 2010, he created a company, BioDapt, that quickly became trusted by top Para competitors.

Team USA said 95% of the top Paralympic lower-limb snowboard athletes use BioDapt’s products, including the entire U.S. Paralympic snowboard team. Schultz said he brought to Italy a 30-pound backpack with some extra parts and hardware to attend to the athletes at Milan Cortina.

“The top eight guys were all wearing BioDapt equipment,” he said after the snowboard cross race Sunday. “Big picture, I’m more about trying to progress the sport as a whole and very proud that I could be a part of that.”

With his competitive days in the past, the goal now will be to spend more time working on new ideas to advance the prosthetic equipment used in sports.

“That is one of the big reasons that I’m retiring from snowboard racing so I can spend more time with my business,” he said. “Also, more time with my family, of course, but I really have some big ideas that I want to work on over the next few years … I’ve got some big ideas on wanting to pursue for a while, but I’ve been too busy with snowboarding.”

Last month, BioDapt and Autodesk announced a partnership to advance the next generation of high-performance prosthetics for Para athletes preparing to compete in the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Games and beyond.

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Schultz made his Paralympic debut at the Pyeongchang Games in 2018, winning gold in snowboard cross and silver in banked slalom. He won a silver medal in snowboard cross at the Beijing Games in 2022.

He finished sixth in snowboard cross at Milan Cortina on Sunday. His final race will be the banked slalom on Friday.

“I had a moment before I pulled into the staging area, just to soak it in, and I’m starting to get this knot in my throat thinking about it, and I’m like, ‘No, no, not right now…’” Schultz said. “It is emotional. I’ve been at this for 12 years and, you know, multiple medals, and travel the world with this family of snowboarders. It’s pretty special.”

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AP Winter Paralympics: https://apnews.com/hub/paralympic-games