7 Athletes To Watch At Beijing Paralympics In Snowboarding, Skiing, Ice Hockey And More

The Beijing Paralympics kicked off Friday with the opening ceremony at the Beijing National Stadium—or the Bird’s Nest—the same venue that hosted the Olympics opening and closing ceremonies.

Whatever organizers had planned for the opening ceremony was surely altered by the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, as the program repeatedly stressed messages of peace and inclusion throughout.

Just one day before the opening ceremony, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) announced that athletes from Russia and Belarus would be banned from participating in the Games. The decision affects 83 athletes who had qualified to compete at the Games.

A total of 564 athletes representing 46 nations will compete at the 2022 Paralympic Games; that figure takes into account the banned athletes from Russia and Belarus.

China had the largest delegation in the Parade of Nations, with 96 athletes; the United States had the second-biggest, with 65.

The 138 women competing at the Beijing Paralympics is a new record. Additionally, medal events are nearly gender equal; there are 78 in all, including 39 for men, 35 for women and four mixed events.

The Paralympics run through March 13. The full schedule of events can be found here. Beijing is 13 hours ahead of Eastern Time, and many events will be broadcast in the evening in the United States and the next day in China. Events are either broadcast live on NBC or can be streamed on Peacock and at NBCOlympics.com.

Some of the world’s top para athletes are getting set to take the ice and hit the slopes in search of bringing home some shiny hardware in their respective sports. Below you’ll find profiles of some of the top athletes in para snowboard, para alpine skiing, para cross-country skiing, para biathlon and para ice hockey to watch during the Games.

Lisa Bunschoten, Netherlands, Para Snowboard

Now a three-time Olympian, Dutch snowboarder Lisa Bunschoten has won two medals in her Olympic career—silver in the SB-LL2 snowboardcross category (a class for athletes with impairment to one or both legs with less activity limitation, such as having a below-knee amputation) and bronze in banked slalom at PyeongChang 2018.

Born with fibula aplasia, which caused her left leg to grow shorter than her right leg, Bunschoten decided at the age of 16 to have her left foot amputated. However, it didn’t prevent her from progressing her snowboarding, a sport she started at age 14.

In March 2019, Bunschoten achieved a major career goal, becoming a double world champion in snowboardcross and banked slalom.

Bunschoten and boyfriend Chris Vos, a fellow adaptive snowboarder who took silver in the SB-LL1 (a category for athletes with significant impairment to one leg, such as amputation above the knee, or combined impairment in both legs) snowboardcross event at Pyeongchang, served as the flagbearers for the Netherlands in the opening ceremony of the Beijing Paralympics.

Along with fellow Dutch adaptive snowboarder Renske van Beek, Bunschoten founded a company called Adaptive Board Chicks that hosts camps for female athletes in the Netherlands to try adaptive snowboarding.

The women’s snowboardcross quarterfinals are scheduled for March 5 at 10 p.m. ET; the finals will be March 6 at 10:30 p.m. ET. The banked slalom quarterfinals and finals will be held on March 11 at 11 p.m. ET.

Brittani Coury, USA, Para Snowboard

Brittani Coury, 35, is competing in her second Paralympics after taking silver in SB-LL2 banked slalom at the Pyeongchang 2018 Games and finishing sixth in snowboardcross.

The Durango, Colorado, native who now lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, began snowboarding when she was 13 years old. In 2003, she broke her right ankle while snowboarding and had multiple surgeries in the following years to treat it. Seven years after her accident, with her ankle still not healed properly, Coury made the decision to have her right leg amputated below the knee.

After years in and out of the hospital, Boury was inspired to pursue a career as a registered nurse. When the pandemic began in 2002, she volunteered to work on the Covid-19 floor of her hospital.

Catch Coury in the women’s snowboardcross quarterfinals on March 5 at 10 p.m. ET, with the final on March 6 at 10:30 p.m. ET. The banked slalom quarterfinals and finals are on March 11 at 11 p.m. ET.

Noah Elliott, USA, Para Snowboard

When he was 14 years old, Noah Elliott was making a name for himself in skateboarding as a semi-pro. One year later, however, an osteosarcoma bone cancer diagnosis changed his life—and his athletic career—forever.

Elliott spent 10 months in the hospital to treat his cancer in 2014. The Sochi Paralympics were happening then, and Elliott watched the broadcast from the hospital. Even though his cancer treatment required his left leg to be amputated above the knee, Elliott realized that it didn’t have to mean the end of competition.

At a camp for children with cancer, he learned about Paralympic snowboarding. Now, the St. Charles, Missouri, native is a professional adaptive rider sponsored by Panasonic and also does public speaking. He credits his daughter Skylar, who he had at the age of 15—just a few months before his cancer diagnosis—for his drive and motivation.

Elliott, now 24, competes in banked slalom and snowboardcross. In his first Olympics, the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, he took gold in banked slalom and bronze in snowboardcross.

You can watch him in snowboardcross on March 5 and banked slalom on March 11.

Andrew Kurka, USA, Para Alpine Skiing

Andrew Kurka was born in Palmer, Alaska, where he was a six-time Alaskan state champion in freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling. He had Olympic aspirations in wrestling—and never could have dreamed he would one day win medals in skiing on sport’s highest stage.

However, when Kurka was 13, an ATV accident severely damaged three vertebrae in the middle of his spinal cord. Two years later, through a program called Challenge Alaska, he tried the monoski for the first time. It sent his athletic career on a new path, and in 2020, he became a member of the U.S. Paralympic team.

Beijing 2022 marks Kurka’s third Games. He earned his two Paralympic medals at Pyeongchang 2018, taking gold in downhill and silver in super-G) and coming in seventh in super combined LW12-1 (a classification for athletes with little leg available leg movement but good sitting balance).

Kurka now volunteers with Challenge Alaska, and his hobbies outside skiing include fishing, rock climbing, hunting, kayaking and DJing. In December 2020, he joined Team
TISI
Toyota and worked with the company to develop a new sit-ski he will use in competition in Beijing. Seven-time Paralympic medalist Laurie Stephens will also use the Toyota sit-ski at the 2022 Paralympic Games.

“I’m a very particular sit-skier because my life is on the line when I’m out there, and I want to make sure that not only am I safe, but I’m fast,” Kurka said.

The men’s downhill sitting event will be broadcast on March 4 at 11:30 p.m. ET. Super-G is scheduled for March 6 at 2:30 a.m. ET, and super-combined is March 7.

Oksana Masters, USA, Para Cross-Country Skiing and Para Biathlon

With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine happening concurrently with the opening of the Paralympic Games, Paralympics star Oksana Masters, a favorite to medal in multiple events, is even more of a central figure in these Games.

Masters competes for Team USA but was born in Khmelnitsky, Ukraine, where she lived until she was seven years old. After being born with multiple disabilities caused by radiation poisoning from the Chernobyl disaster, including tibial hemimelia, Masters lived in a Ukranian orphanage until she was adopted by Gay Masters of Kentucky.

After moving to the United States, Masters had one and then both legs amputated above the knee at seven and 14 years old. Having been born with webbed fingers with no thumbs, she also had surgery to modify fingers on each hand to function as thumbs.

A Summer and Winter Olympian, Masters has a bronze para rowing medal from the 2012 London Games and two gold medals in para cycling from the Tokyo 2020 Games. In the Winter Olympics, where she competes in para cross-country skiing and para biathlon, Masters has seven medals total; five in the former and two in the latter. The 32-year-old is the defending gold medalist in the 1.5 km sprint classic sitting event and the 5 km sitting event in cross-country skiing.

On March 3, Masters tweeted “it’s the stars and strips [sic] that keeps my Ukranian heart beating.”

On Instagram, she wrote that her heart was breaking as Russia invaded her birth nation of Ukraine.

Sponsored by Toyota, Masters was nominated for a Best Female Athlete with a Disability ESPY in 2015 and 2016. After she’s completed her competitive career, she hopes to open her own coffee shop.

The women’s para cross country sprint is March 8 at 11 p.m. ET. The women’s 7.5 km sitting is March 11 at 11:25 p.m. ET. The women’s para biathlon 6 km sitting event is March 4 at 9 p.m. ET and the women’s 10 km sitting event is March 7 at 9 p.m. ET.

Tyler McGregor, Canada, Para Ice Hockey

At 16 years old, Tyler McGregor’s hockey career was burgeoning. When he suffered a broken leg, it was just, he thought, a minor bump in the road. The Canadian returned to playing, but when a lump developed at the site of the fracture, testing revealed it was the soft tissue cancer spindle cell sarcoma.

After eight months of chemotherapy, McGregor’s left leg was amputated. But rather than the end of his hockey-playing days, it just marked the beginning of an incredibly successful para ice hockey career.

In 2012, McGregor began international competition, and in 2014, he represented Team Canada at the 2014 Sochi Paralympics. He’s now a three-time Olympian who has won a bronze medal (Sochi 2014) and a silver medal (Pyeongchang 2018), serving as alternate captain at the latter.

Now captain of the Canadian Para Ice Hockey team, McGregor joined Team Panasonic in 2021, the brand’s first athlete from Canada. He is also a strong advocate for cancer research through his work with the Terry Fox Foundation.

Team Canada’s chance at a gold medal in 2018 was stolen by the United States, who won 2-1 in overtime, and McGregor and his team are hungry to bring home that shade of hardware this time around in Beijing.

The USA versus Canada hockey preliminary round is March 5 at 12:05 a.m. ET.

Mike Schultz, USA, Para Snowboard

Like fellow adaptive snowboarder Noah Elliott, Mike Schultz competed in another sport entirely before the accident that resulted in the amputation of his left leg above the knee.

A motocross and snowmobile racer who was gaining acclaim on the pro circuit, Schultz was competing in an ISOC National Snocross race in 2008 when he injured his leg in a bad crash. After undergoing surgery to save his life and his leg, doctors told him his left leg would have to be amputated above the knee. Not only did Schultz get back on his dirt bike and his snowmobile after mastering his prosthetic, but he took up a new sport—adaptive snowboarding—after being introduced to it by the Adaptive Action Sports team at Copper Mountain.

When Schultz’s prosthetic wasn’t cutting it for the level of athletic performance he wanted to achieve, he engineered his own, eventually founding his own company, BioDapt, which supplies his competitors around the world with his top-of-the-line prosthetics.

Schultz earned gold in snowboardcross SB-LL1 and silver in banked slalom SB-LL1 at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, and is a favorite to make the podium in both events heading into the Beijing 2022 Paralympics.

Watch Schultz in snowboardcross on March 5 and banked slalom on March 11.