I felt like as an athlete, I was able to stretch some people's imagination and stretch imagination as far as what it means to be disabled and hopefully have people force people to look at things a little bit differently than they would have done in any way.

How did this incredible man turn a personal tragedy into an inspiration, breaking through countless barriers to challenge perceptions about human capability?

Find out tonight on the A-list as I sit down with former Paralympic skier Chris Waddell.

Chris Waddell lives his life by the motto, It's not what happens to you, it's what you do with what happens to you and what Chris has done with what's happened to him is nothing short of revolutionary.

He was a star varsity skier at Middlebury College when a tragic accident left him paralyzed from the waist down.

His story could have easily been one of a young athlete losing his chance for greatness.

But Chris saw his accident as an awakening.

Since then, he's become the most decorated mono-skier of all time.

And in 2009, he became the first paraplegic to reach the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro unassisted.

These days, Chris is focusing his efforts on traveling the country to tell his story and change perceptions about the abilities of disabled people.

I caught up with Chris when he was in Chattanooga to share his inspirational message with both patients and supporters of Siskin Hospital, as well as the student body of Baylor School.

And from the time where little we've been taught that we can do whatever we want to do, we can be whatever we want to be.

And for me, it is unacceptable that at 20 years old, somebody would say, you know, you might be able to do like half of what you wanted to do.

I wanted to figure out what I could still do.

He's worried about what I've lost.

And I'm like, you know, all bad days later.

But right now I want to figure out what I can still do.

You say, Okay, fine.

That was fun.

Well, Chris, welcome to the A-list.

Thank you.

I'm honored to be here.

We're so glad you're here.

We're so glad you're in Chattanooga.

You've had quite a busy day.

It's been busy.

No doubt about it.

Yes.

How often are you traveling to do these kind of speaking engagements?

A lot.

I think I spend probably 200 days on the year on the road last year.

Wow.

Yeah.

And where are you based?

Where do you live?

Park City, Utah.

But where did you grow up?

Massachusetts.

Hour and a half west of Boston.

And in a little town called Granby, Massachusetts.

What was your childhood like?

What was my...

I don't know.

I mean, you think it's ordinary, right?

Know, it's a I was a little kid.

I loved that.

You know, sports were kind of what I what I always like to do.

I always had a ball or a bat or skis or something like that.

You know.

And so that's what I did.

We grew up 10 minutes from a ski area, a tiny little ski area named Mount Tom, which is about 680 feet of vertical, like half the size of the Empire State Building.

And so not huge.

And that's where I learned to ski and and did all that stuff.

And, you know, that's that's kind of what I did.

When did you first know that you wanted to be a competitive skier?

I started ski racing when I was six, and so I knew I wanted to be competitive at that point.

But I think funny enough, like the idea of going to the Olympics didn't really cross my mind other than just kind of watching the Olympics.

And it was sort of like a pipe dream kind of thing, but it wasn't reality until after my accident.

So.

So, you know, sort of the strange part about that is I ended up doing more afterwards and dreaming more afterwards than I did before.

Take us back to that time.

So you were at Middlebury College?

Yes.

You were on the ski team, but it didn't happen while you were in school.

It really happened on a break.

It's it was my first day of Christmas vacation, so I finished finished exams the night before and drove home.

And the next morning my brother and I went up to our home mountain and met up.

This is actually Berkshires a different mountain where we stayed.

There was about 900 to 1000 feet of vertical, a little bit bigger, almost the size of the Empire State Building.

And and so we went up there and met up with a couple of friends and started skiing, just taking a couple of warmup runs before we're going to train that day.

In the middle of it turned my ski, popped off and I fell in the middle of the trail, didn't hit anything, but the ground broke two vertebrae.

I don't really remember the accident because I was in shock.

I think there was a fair amount of pain associated with it, and so I don't remember it.

I was conscious, but I don't remember it.

When did you realize that you were paralyzed?

I think I was in a state of denial to a certain extent, and denial in a couple of different ways.

One, I don't know if I could really understand it, and nobody ever told me that I was paralyzed.

No one told me.

Nobody told me.

They told the doctor told my parents at that point.

And he did not do a very good job of telling my parents and my brother.

And I was sort of like, well, you know, your engine's blown on your car.

You're going to have to get a new one.

It's almost the kind of compassion that he gave them.

And so they sort of shielded me from that.

But, you know, so there was a denial in that sense, I guess.

And then another denial in that I was an athlete and I felt like things that applied to other people wouldn't apply to me, that I was going to be strong enough to get through this whole thing.

So what was the process that you went through?

I mean, you talk about denial.

Was there anger?

Was there a sense of feeling sorry for yourself?

Was there sadness for, you know, what what are the stages that one goes through when they suffer such a trauma?

I'm not representative of the stages that one goes through.

I think I was so scared of some of those stages over that of a stage of anger, of a stage of depression or something like that, because I was my biggest fear was in losing the people who were close to me, my friends, my family, that what had happened to me might drive a gulf between between us.

And I could see it just in people coming to the hospital room to come visit me, that they'd come in and you could see this just look of pain on their face and this responsibility to make everything better.

And obviously there was nothing they could do to make everything better.

But I'm worried that that is going that that was going to be the thing that was going to drive them away from me because they'd feel uncomfortable and so I felt like I put them at ease, which is funny because I'm sitting there lying in the hospital bed, you know, tubes coming in and out of my body, all this stuff and everything.

And I'm putting them at ease and it's okay, you know, and laughing and joking and stuff like that.

And oh, well, you seem like you're the same, which is exactly what I wanted to be was the same.

And so I didn't go through that depression, that anger and any of that stuff, really, mostly because I was I was really worried about, you know, effectively losing what I considered to be my life.

Chris had no intentions of losing his life and wasted no time in trying to get back to normalcy.

Though he did learn to walk with the aid of straight legs, Chris found that he was simply too busy to be restricted by their slow pace.

During his road to recovery, Chris found inspiration in disabled athletes like amputee skier Diana Golden.

And like them, he was determined not to let his disability to hinder his goals.

And so only a year after his accident, Chris found himself back on the slopes.

So what was more difficult or more challenging?

Resolving to go from the straight legs to a chair or finally deciding to get back on skis or a ski, I should say.

Where I ski, you know, the the resolving not to not to walk.

It's almost like I just ended up getting too busy to do it.

And I let go of that and I had a lot of other things that were going skiing was something that I, I imagined myself skiing as I was lying in my hospital bed.

I was doing run after run.

In my mind as I was in the hospital, I knew that I would ski again.

I knew there was not a question that I would ski.

I don't remember the accident, so I don't have sort of that flashback moment of like, Oh, okay, I can't get over that.

And, and, and really when I first came back to it, skiing was my greatest teacher.

It was where I achieved my highest highs.

But I also felt my most crushing lows.

And there's so much that you learn from both both of those points and sometimes more from the crushing lows than you do from the highs.

And I feel like I'd never reach my potential.

So for me, getting back to skiing was one I think representative of my full recovery that I was getting back to what I love to do and I was getting able I was able to share that with the people who really mattered to me.

But it was also getting back to trying to try to prove myself to myself.

So explain to someone, either a novice skier or someone who's never skied before The primary difference.

And I've been skiing before I started very late.

I'm not a great skier, and when I see people on Monday skis especially, they just just whiz by me and I think, holy cow, you know, so what is what's the primary difference when that first day or when you started training on a minor ski, what was the hardest adjustment besides the obvious of not having legs to get on to skis?

But in terms of balance, in terms of agility, in terms of what you're able to do and not able to do on the mountain that you could do before.

The hardest part was that my mind knew what I was supposed to do and my body had absolutely no idea how to do it.

So, so much of when you're learning something and when you become proficient in something is that you're teaching your body how to react.

So you don't have to think actively about, Oh, move this here, move that there.

We do so many things throughout our day where it's just instinctive.

I was in total active thought the whole time when I was first learning to model ski, just trying to make the ski turn, trying to stay upright.

I thought myself down the mountain in like six, six inch, two, like foot long increments.

And it was a exhausting I mean, just mentally exhausting because my body just didn't know.

And I was I was constantly thinking, how do I do this?

How do I do it?

I do that.

Okay, now do that, do this to this, to that.

It's like that's that active thought is so punishing.

And that was the hardest part because you eventually you want to teach your body essentially this kinesthetic awareness and you want to teach your body instinct.

You teach it how to react.

And and it didn't know anything.

That was the hardest part.

When did it click and how did it click?

I really think it took me three years to get to the point where I felt like it actually clicked and and I was skiing pretty much every day throughout the winter.

I skied for a month in New Zealand.

Over the summer, I, I ski a lot, I put a lot of time in and finally, finally I changed a couple of things just in my seat.

I'm a this might be a little too technical, but I'm a T1011 paraplegic, so it's about a belly button level of sensation and function.

And so I don't have a lot of torso muscles, stomach back muscles for balance.

And so so the balance part of it was, was really a challenge.

And, and I actually strap myself in a little bit differently, had had sort of like an elastic type of like kidney belt kind of strap that went around just underneath my my sternum.

And that gave me a lot more support.

And at that point, that was the moment I went out one day and did it and went, okay, wow, I am a lot better than I was before.

I have to ask, what did your parents think about your reentry into skiing and going back on that mountain?

The greatest gift that my parents have given to me and my brother is the opportunity to make mistakes, the opportunity to fail.

And that didn't change after my accident.

They, you know, as much as I'm sure rational thought might have said, what do you think you're doing?

They gave me that opportunity to do it.

Chris spent endless hours in training with his new equipment, and his efforts paid off.

Not only was he able to return to the sport he loved, he also completely revolutionized the world of ski.

In 1990, he became the first person to achieve what skiing magazine called the turn, a complete arc that had never been thought possible to accomplish on a mano ski.

And Chris wasn't stopping there.

His accident had given him the push to believe that he could be the best in the world.

And only two years after struggling down the mountain on that first run, Chris was presented with the opportunity that would help him achieve that goal.

Tell me the moment when you found out you had made the US Disabled Ski Team.

The moment that I had made it and made the ski team, it was funny.

I was sort of like a surrogate member in some ways because we went to Canadian nationals and they represented me.

So if you're running speed events, you need a coach representing you.

My coach was my college coach and he wasn't there, so they represented me at that point.

I started going to some of their meetings and I think at some point they kind of said, Well, this guy's already here.

So us nationals, which was the next week they announced that I had made the team, which was kind of unusual.

They usually didn't name people during the middle of the season.

It would be at the end of the season, but this was the last race of the season and that that to me, it was a I always looked at it as a stepping stone because the intention for me, that wasn't the goal.

The goal wasn't to make the US team.

The goal was was to be the best in the world, but also to take that best in the world and stretch what was what was possible, to really change what was possible.

And so so making the ski team was confirmation of I'm here now.

I will have that opportunity to go and try to be the best in the world.

Now, was that always your goal?

Even growing up, you wanted to be the best in the world or since your accident?

It was more since my accident.

And the thing is that I think that I felt cheated in some ways as growing up in that that I never really believed that I could be the best in the world.

And and that's that's kind of too bad in some it's like as a kid you you should dream huge and go out and if you don't make it, you don't make it.

But but I don't think I ever really believed that I could be.

So that was that was one of the big that was one of the things that in some ways I felt like after my accident was starting over and I was sort of starting over with the knowledge that I had in the 20 years that I'm 20 years my life.

But I was starting over and I thought, I'm not going to make this mistake again.

Is is that typical?

And I know you said you didn't have the typical reaction, you didn't go through the typical stages.

It seems almost counterintuitive, though, that you would suffer a trauma and think, now I'm going to do even more than I did before.

You know, before I didn't think I could do anything.

Now that that could accomplish anything.

Some of it is so so I broke my back.

I spent two months in the hospital and I remember recovering and effectively thinking I will never be intimidated again because the idea of breaking my back, it was like it was the closest that I could have experienced or that I have experienced to to death.

It's like, Oh, well, I've gone all the way there, okay?

And now I get it.

Now I get a chance to go forward.

I'm not going to waste it.

And you didn't waste it.

You you've got more medals on the slopes than any other monarch skier to come before you or since, right?

Yeah.

How did that feel?

It's it's funny because that's part of history now.

I mean, it's one of those things that is kind of nice now that I've that I've done it.

When you're when you're doing it, it's almost like you can't you can't grasp the, you know, what it means, the significance of, of that kind of stuff.

But now it's like I feel like I was a part of a part of the sport.

And I think that what it means to me is that it's similar to the people that I looked up to when I was first starting, and I said, I want to be like those guys.

So so in some ways I achieved what the way that I looked at them, that I became that person for, you know, for a period of time.

After competing in the 2004 Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece, Chris retired from competitive sports to pursue new challenges.

In 2009, he attempted what many saw as an impossible dream to become the first paraplegic to summit Mount Kilimanjaro.

Chris made the climb with a crew of 61 African porters and guides, as well as his own team and a film crew to chronicle the journey.

Sharing his story was an integral part of the project.

For Chris, the 19,340 foot Mountain was the ultimate barrier to be broken and a way to show the world just what could be achieved with enough hope and determination and so when and why did you ever decide that you needed to climb Mount Kilimanjaro?

It's okay.

So it was it was literally it was my subconscious.

I was just out training one day and I was I was climbing this mountain behind my house and came down.

And as I came down, I was just, you know, I'm not there's no active thought going on in this.

Thought just popped into my head.

I should climb Mount Kilimanjaro.

Oh, yeah.

I have no idea where that came from.

I've no idea at all.

And obviously it's an extension of what I did as an athlete where I felt like as an athlete, I was able to stretch some people's imagination and stretch imagination as far as what it means to be disabled and hopefully have people force people to look at things a little bit differently than they would have done it anyway.

So it's an extension of that.

But but yeah, I started looking and I said, Well, this seems like a good idea.

And then I told some of my friends and I expected them to go idiot.

And they were like, Oh, that's a great idea.

You should do that.

Oh, okay.

And so I had support all the way along and, and I don't think I knew that it was as big a project as it was.

I thought I might be able to do this in like six months or so.

Go through, do it, get it done, and and move on.

And three years later, I think it was because they also felt like I had to tell the story and the responsibility for me was that, you know, it's like it's very easy to be that tree, that proverbial tree falling in the woods.

And if nobody's there to see it doesn't make a sound.

And, you know, if nobody's there to see it, it doesn't make a sound or it really doesn't matter whether it makes a sound.

And if I was going to climb the mountain, I wanted to be able to tell the story.

So you knew you wanted it to be a documentary?

From the beginning.

From the beginning.

The two were tied.

If I was going to do it, I was going to make sure that we told the story, and telling the story was of greater importance really, then, then climbing the mountain.

So in the three years that it took you, I guess from start to literal finish, what what did that involve?

I just can't even imagine.

I mean, the idea itself was so overwhelming that the task at hand must be cumbersome at at the very least, What, what was the first thing you had to do?

And then what?

We're all the steps along the way.

There were a lot of missteps along the way.

I think the think I've got to get that out there first.

You know, I mean, the I keep saying that the two weeks that we that we did the trip and actually did the climb were the easiest two weeks that I've had in the last three years.

Really.

Because I had to do is was pedal for 9 hours a day average of 9 hours a day.

That's it.

Yeah.

And that's all I had to do.

Well I didn't have to do all these things that I didn't know how to do.

So, so back to like, you know, writing a treatment for a documentary, what's the documentary going to be on?

How are we going to find the right person to tell this story and how do we bring in a group of people to make this happen and gain the support and put a board together and and and how do we get our message out?

It's part of the reason that we started doing this nametags program.

Our educational program, is because we felt like we wanted to effect this change.

I mean, our mission is we want to change the way the world sees people with disabilities by highlighting our universal struggle.

And we figured where better to go than to schools.

So I'm fortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, because it's feeling more and more successful right now.

But I felt like the way that we had to to effect this change was starting with a really wide breadth that we just had to.

So we had to do the schools, we had to do the movie, we had to do the climb, we had to do all of these things.

And my board kept saying to me, You need to focus.

And I was like, Huh, Yeah, I think that sounds like a great idea.

And then I'd go off and do exactly what I was doing before, which I'm sure they could tell you exactly.

That's fine.

And yes, he drove us crazy, but I felt like it was the only way that we were going to be able to do it.

That was one of my one of my issues when as a Paralympic athletes, I felt like we just didn't have the exposure that we really needed.

So what happened during the climb that you could have never predicted and you could have never scripted.

Not making it, you know, having to get carried for 100 feet was the biggest thing really, because that just didn't work with my with the script that I had in my mind.

Having to be carried.

How far?

100 and.

100 feet.

100, 100 feet.

Everyone that we could climb.

And to do that was not considered success.

It was not considered success because, you know, one of the funny things is that I felt like and this has been I'm trying to get over this, but I've been really good at narrowly defining success.

And and if it's not within this this, you know, this total confine, then I then I'm not successful.

And so for this, the success that I saw was I had to get to the top of the mountain.

That would be like breaking a record and that would create the interest that we needed.

It turns out that it's a far better story as a result of of, you know, people of them carrying me.

It's a much better story.

I mean, it's a much better story with regard to this idea of vulnerability.

And I had to allow myself to be carried.

I didn't just overcome everything.

And and the realization that that really we're responsible for whether we're separate or not.

Since the climb, Chris has been sharing the story of his own remarkable achievements all across the country through his nonprofit One Revolution.

It is his mission to show the world that regardless of physical ability, we all share challenges and triumphs, and we all have the ability to conquer our own mountains.

So when will you know when you've reached success, at least another milestone.

What what do you hope people see in you that maybe they don't now?

They don't right now?

Or what do you hope they see in other people with disabilities upon first looking at them that they may not now?

Well, I hope that oftentimes we make our first first, you know, first impression of people in the first 15 to 30 seconds and we say yes or no.

You know, I like that person.

I don't like that person.

And and we do this every day.

So what I'm hoping is that that at least we can we can plant plant a seed of a question at that point where where you look at somebody in a wheelchair and you go, oh, okay, well, don't dismiss this person.

This person might, you know, might be somebody who can actually teach you about yourself and and I think that's the hope is to actually see the individual as opposed to seeing seeing just just the chair.

We categorize people every day.

And and, you know, I'm I'd like to, you know, plant the seed of a doubt at least.

So the motto for one revolution and I assume for your life is it's not what happens to you.

It's what you do with what happens to you.

Right.

What do you plan to do next?

What do I plan to do next while I'm continuing to work on this job?

But but the thing is that the the mountain is a metaphor for all of our all of our challenges.

And people keep asking me, So what's your next challenge?

What's your next mountain?

And the next mountain?

For me, it's not necessarily always a physical time.

The next mountain ultimately is writing my book, which is part of the reason that I started this whole thing, like to give myself permission to to write my story and to put myself in a position where, you know, where I'm public enough, where where it's viable, where I could actually sell some of the books, where somebody might want to buy the book.

And and that's that's the big that's a much bigger challenge for me.

That's that's one of the hardest things that I've tried to do.

And and I'd really like to do it and give myself permission to sort of let myself be be out there because I think I have to tell an honest story.

But I also sort of it's really easy for us to hold a little bit back when we're trying something and go, Oh, well, if I didn't succeed, I don't think I really put my best effort forward.

And that's a self-preservation thing.

So.

So this is going to be a much bigger challenge.

I think, for me.

Well, I think you're a great example of how we all need to see what our greatest potential might be and then reach even further beyond that.

Thank you.

It's been a great pleasure meeting you.

Thank you.

Likewise.

Appreciate it.