Meet The Athletes

On March 7, 2014, hundreds of athletes from around the world gathered for the Sochi Winter Games. They competed at the newly constructed Sochi Olympic Park, situated along the Black Sea coast and featuring the Shayba Arena for sled hockey and the Fisht Olympic Stadium. Only 30 miles away in Krasnaya Polyana, the mountain cluster offered challenging new runs for snowboarders, cross-country skiers, and other alpine and nordic athletes.

Get to know the top competitors from the 2014 Winter Paralympics in Sochi and the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London!

Winter 2014

Alpine Skiing

Heath Calhoun

Heath Calhoun

In 2003, five months after losing his legs in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in Iraq, Heath Calhoun tried adaptive skiing for the first time. A ... More »

Allison Jones

Allison Jones

Allison Jones competes in both the summer and winter Games, as a Paralympic cyclist and skier. She’s compiled an amazing record: two silver medals ... More »

Alana Nichols

Alana Nichols

Alana Nichols loves speed, sports, and snow. As a teenager, she spent winters snowboarding in Colorado.Then, in 2000, she attempted a flip, over-rotated, and ... More »

Amy Purdy

Amy Purdy

Amy Purdy started snowboarding at 15 and loved it. Then, at 19, she contracted a particularly virulent form of bacterial meningitis. She went into septic ... More »

Evan Strong

Evan Strong

Evan Strong grew up in Hawaii, an avid skateboarder who became a sponsored professional athlete at age 13. Then, just a few weeks before his ... More »

Danelle Umstead

Danelle Umstead

Danelle Umstead, like many downhill skiers, likes to go fast. But when she shoots down the slopes, she’s relying on someone else’s eyes ... More »

Biathlon

Tatyana McFadden

Tatyana McFadden

Tatyana McFadden has had a tremendous year: After taking home 3 golds and a bronze in wheelchair racing in the 2012 London Paralympic Games, she ... More »

Andy Soule

Andy Soule

Andy Soule was a student at Texas A&M University at the time of the 9/11 attacks. The tragedy inspired him to enlist, and ... More »

Jeremy Wagner

Jeremy Wagner

Jeremy Wagner retired from duty as an Army Reservist after serving for a year in Iraq, heading back to Oahu, Hawaii. Then, in 2007, turning ... More »

Nordic Skiing

Tatyana McFadden

Tatyana McFadden

Tatyana McFadden has had a tremendous year: After taking home 3 golds and a bronze in wheelchair racing in the 2012 London Paralympic Games, she ... More »

Andy Soule

Andy Soule

Andy Soule was a student at Texas A&M University at the time of the 9/11 attacks. The tragedy inspired him to enlist, and ... More »

Jeremy Wagner

Jeremy Wagner

Jeremy Wagner retired from duty as an Army Reservist after serving for a year in Iraq, heading back to Oahu, Hawaii. Then, in 2007, turning ... More »

Sled Hockey

Sled Hockey Team

Sled Hockey Team

Get to know the seventeen players of the USA sled hockey team. More »

Wheelchair Curling

Patrick McDonald

Patrick McDonald

Patrick McDonald is the captain or “skip” of the US Paralympic curling team. He began curling in 2008 and won a spot on the Team ... More »

Summer 2012

Archery

Jeff Fabry

Jeff Fabry

Jeff Fabry is well-known in international archery as a five-time world championships medalist, three-time Paralympic Games medalist, and a member of Team USA for London ... More »

Russell Wolfe

Russell Wolfe

Hometown: Widnoon, PA Residence: Williamsburg, VA Sport: Archery Archery is a precision sport, but every athlete prepares for competition differently. “Very rarely will you see ... More »

Cycling

Allison Jones

Allison Jones

  • Colorado Springs, CO
  • Sport: Cycling

Allison Jones competes in both the summer and winter Games, as a Paralympic cyclist and skier. She’s compiled an amazing record: two silver medals ... More »

Greta Neimanas

Greta Neimanas

Greta first saw track cycling at the 2004 Athens Paralympics, found a track in her hometown, and began racing. Only two years later, she became ... More »

Equestrian

Wendy Fryke

Wendy Fryke

Equestrian Wendy Fryke only started riding as an adult. She rode first in the hunter and jumper rings, then in horse trials, which led to ... More »

Fencing

Cat Bouwkamp

Cat Bouwkamp

Barely 16 years old, Catherine “Cat” Bouwkamp is the top-ranked female wheelchair fencer in the United States in all three blades of fencing: foil, epee ... More »

Goalball

Jennifer Armbruster

Jennifer Armbruster

London will be Jennifer Armbruster’s sixth Paralympic Games. Her first was Barcelona, 1992. Her most recent was Beijing, 2008, where she had the honor ... More »

Lisa Czechowski

Lisa Czechowski

Lisa Czechowski (née Banta) was born with visual impairment and diagnosed with nystagmus, involuntary movement of her eyes. Later, when she was in middle school ... More »

Asya Miller

Asya Miller

Asya Miller has competed in a variety of sports her whole life. Over the years she has excelled at goalball, powerlifting, track and field, and ... More »

Judo

Dartanyon Crockett

Dartanyon Crockett

  • Cleveland, OH
  • Sport: Judo

As a wrestler, Dartanyon Crockett was a tough and aggressive athlete, relying on speed, strength and a strong attack to pin his opponents quickly. On ... More »

Myles Porter

Myles Porter

  • Colorado Springs, CO
  • Sport: Judo

Myles Porter first took a judo course during college at the University of Toledo. He very quickly made his mark, competing in his first international ... More »

Powerlifting

Mary Stack

Mary Stack

London 2012 will be Mary Stack’s fourth time competing on Team USA in powerlifting. She comes to the Games with medals at numerous competitions ... More »

Shooting

Eric Hollen

Eric Hollen

Eric Hollen says he’s been involved in shooting his whole life: “Pretty much anything that went bang, I shot it.” He served in the ... More »

Sitting Volleyball

Kari Miller

Kari Miller

Kari Miller was serving in active military duty, getting ready for officer training school, when a drunk driver smashed into the car she was traveling ... More »

Brent Rasmussen

Brent Rasmussen

Brent Rasmussen is captain of the US men’s sitting volleyball team. Rasmussen graduated from the University of Nebraska-Omaha in 2001 with a degree in ... More »

James Stuck

James Stuck

James Stuck is a member of Team USA’s Men's Sitting Volleyball Team. His height – 6 feet, 5 inches – and his arm span and ... More »

Soccer 7-a-side

Christopher Ahrens

Christopher Ahrens

Chris Ahrens has played soccer since age 4. He learned about Paralympic soccer in college at SUNY College of Brockport, where he was getting his ... More »

Swimming

Rudy Garcia-Tolson

Rudy Garcia-Tolson

Rudy Garcia-Tolson is looking for a three-peat. He won gold medals in the last two Paralympic Games in the 200 meter individual relay, setting a ... More »

Jessica Long

Jessica Long

Jessica Long exploded on to the sports scene in 2004 when, at the age of 12, she won three gold medals at the Athens Paralympics ... More »

Ileana Rodriguez

Ileana Rodriguez

Ileana Rodriguez grew up in Cuba, in the waterfront city of Matanzas, famous for its beaches. She swam in the bay, then became a swimmer ... More »

Bradley Snyder

Bradley Snyder

Bradley Snyder was born in Reno, Nevada, in 1984. He excelled in multiple sports growing up, including cross-country, track and field, and swimming. After graduating ... More »

Mallory Weggemann

Mallory Weggemann

On January 21, 2008, Mallory Weggemann received an epidural injection to help treat back pain. But an error in the medical procedure left the 18-year-old ... More »

Track and Field

Cheri Blauwet

Cheri Blauwet

Cheri Blauwet began her athletics career in high school, when a track coach recruited her for the team. Born and raised on a farm in ... More »

Tommy Chasanoff

Tommy Chasanoff

Tommy Chasanoff has been running since age 5. Nineteen years later, at the Parapan American Games in Mexico, 2011, he took his first international medals ... More »

Kortney Clemons

Kortney Clemons

Clemons joined the U.S. Army in 2001 and was serving as a combat medic for the 1st Cavalry Division in Iraq when a roadside ... More »

Anjali Forber-Pratt

Anjali Forber-Pratt

When Anjali Forber-Pratt was just 5, she remembers seeing wheelchair racers for the very first time competing in the Boston Marathon. This moment planted a ... More »

Jessica Galli

Jessica Galli

Wheelchair racer Jessica Galli competed in Sydney in 2000 and again in Athens in 2004. But her breakthrough came in Beijing 2008, where she won ... More »

Lex Gillette

Lex Gillette

Elexis “Lex” Gillette won his first gold medal in the long jump, his main sport, at the 2002 USABA National Championships. He was just 17 ... More »

Sabra Hawkes

Sabra Hawkes

In 2008, sprinter Sabra Hawkes called running in the Beijing Games “a dream.” She qualified for Team USA after winning the 100m dash, and placing ... More »

Blake Leeper

Blake Leeper

Blake Leeper was born without lower legs and has been using prosthesis since he was a toddler. Unwilling to sit on the sidelines, he played ... More »

Linda Mastandrea

Linda Mastandrea

As children, Linda Mastandrea and her sister Laura were inseparable, as many twins are, except in sports. Linda was diagnosed with spastic diplegia cerebral palsy ... More »

Tatyana McFadden

Tatyana McFadden

Tatyana McFadden has had a tremendous year: After taking home 3 golds and a bronze in wheelchair racing in the 2012 London Paralympic Games, she ... More »

Katy Sullivan

Katy Sullivan

Katy Sullivan was born without legs and has walked on prosthetics all her life. As a child she tried gymnastics and swimming, but eventually decided ... More »

Scott Winkler

Scott Winkler

Scott Winkler was serving with the 549th Military Police Company out of Fort Stewart, Georgia, when they were deployed to Iraq in 2003. While unloading ... More »

Wheelchair Basketball

Alana Nichols

Alana Nichols

Alana Nichols loves speed, sports, and snow. As a teenager, she spent winters snowboarding in Colorado.Then, in 2000, she attempted a flip, over-rotated, and ... More »

Paul Schulte

Paul Schulte

Paul Schulte is a co-captain of the U.S. men’s wheelchair basketball team, and has helped bring home many titles since he joined the ... More »

Andrea Woodson-Smith

Andrea Woodson-Smith

“Second chances would definitely be my story,” says Andrea Woodson-Smith. She played college basketball at James Madison University until she was sidelined after a collision ... More »

Wheelchair Rugby

Delvin McMillian

Delvin McMillian

Wheelchair rugby player Delvin McMillian was first named to the United States National team in December 2010 during a tryout at the Lakeshore Foundation, a ... More »

Wheelchair Tennis

Jon Rydberg

Jon Rydberg

Jon Rydberg was not going to be left out. As a pre-teen on crutches, he wanted to play tennis with his friends. The solution: his ... More »

Mackenzie Soldan

Mackenzie Soldan

As a high school senior, Mackenzie Soldan was the top-ranked member of the U.S. Junior wheelchair tennis team, and she was ranked number one ... More »

David Wagner

David Wagner

David Wagner is one of the top wheelchair tennis players in the world, in both singles and doubles. He has been in the top 3 ... More »

Stephen Welch

Stephen Welch

Stephen Welch has been competing in wheelchair tennis for 20 years. In that time, he’s amassed over 100 major titles, including two number one ... More »

More From PBS

  • Presented in the United States under agreement with the United States Olympic Committee.
  • Produced for PBS by
    • Funding provided by:
    • Bruce C., Alex, Conner and Lynn Bay Dayton
    • The Gordon and Llura Gund Foundation
    • No Limits Media