The first Winter Paralympics were held in 1976. That means next spring’s Milano-Cortina Games, which begin in early March, will mark the 50th anniversary of this event.
Amputee athletes have achieved some of Team USA’s most important milestones during the first half-century of Winter Paralympics competition. We’ve gone through the headlines from each of the previous 13 Winter Games and picked out one key highlight.
1976 Winter Paralympics: Örnsköldsvik, Sweden
The United States only sent one athlete to the first Winter Paralympics: Bill Hovanic, an Army veteran who lost his right leg in combat during the Vietnam War. He raced in every skiing event at the 1976 Games except the cross-country relay. Hovanic returned for the 1980 Winter Paralympics and barely missed a bronze medal in the giant slalom. “I was surprised I was the only one who showed up” for the ’76 Games, he later said. “But there was no funding. The disabled, we weren’t looked at. It’s just the way society was at the time.”
1980 Winter Paralympics: Geilo, Norway
Cindy Castellano, an above-elbow amputee, became Team USA’s first Winter Paralympic gold medalist, topping the podium in both the slalom and giant slalom. She was later joined by Doug Keil, who won the same pair of events on the men’s side. Keil went on to establish Challenge Alaska, one of the nation’s first adaptive sports organizations. Castellano, meanwhile, donated her gold medals to the US Olympic and Paralympic Museum, noting that sports are about “the ‘everydayness’ of achieving a goal….but mostly, they’re about joy.”
1984 Winter Paralympics: Innsbruck, Austria
Bonnie St. John became the first Black American to win a medal of any kind—Olympic or Paralympic—in winter competition. She notched three at the 1984 Games, a silver and two bronzes. In her first event, the slalom, St. John wiped out in the final turn, but she scrambled to get to the finish line and ended up winning bronze. “That lesson has stood with me forever,” she said recently. “People fall down, winners get up.” A winner her entire life, St. John went on to earn a Rhodes Scholarship and eventually served on the White House National Economic Council.
1988 Winter Paralympics: Innsbruck, Austria
These Paralympic Games brought only career medals for one of America’s greatest-ever adaptive skiers, Diana Golden. She won both the downhill and the giant slalom. Weeks earlier, she had won gold in the giant slalom at the Calgary Winter Olympics, where adaptive skiing was featured as a demonstration sport. Golden also was the first Paralympic winter athlete to achieve mainstream fame, earning coverage from Sports Illustrated, the Today show, Reader’s Digest, and Skiing Magazine.
1992 Winter Paralympics: Albertville, France
For the first time ever, the United States finished atop the Winter Paralympic medal table, with 45 medals: 20 gold, 16 silver, and nine bronze. The entire US team only numbered 29 athletes, which means each American won an average of 1.5 medals. Standout amputee performers included Greg Mannino (two golds, two silvers), Sarah Billmeier (two golds, one silver), and Rik Heid (three silvers, one bronze).
1994 Winter Paralympics: Lillehammer, Norway
Team USA dominated the skiing events, finishing with 39 total medals and 24 golds, more than double the number of any other team. Leading amputee competitors once again included Heid (two golds), Billmeier (two golds, one silver), and Mannino (two golds, one bronze). Mannino went on to become a certified prosthetist, while Billmeier earned a medical degree and now teaches at Dartmouth Medical School. Both earned more than a dozen career Paralympic skiing medals.
1998 Winter Paralympics: Nagano, Japan
Eighteen-year-old Mary Riddell made the podium in all four women’s downhill skiing events, including a gold in the giant slalom and a silver in the downhill. One of nine US amputees to make the podium at these Games, Riddell—who started racing internationally at age 14—was one of the youngest ever.
2002 Winter Paralympics: Salt Lake City, USA
The Winter Paralympics were held in the United States for the first time, and Team USA gave the home fans something to cheer about with its first-ever gold medal in sled hockey. Meanwhile, Steve Cook became the first American star in Paralympic cross-country skiing, taking silver in all four events. After retiring in 2007, Cook developed the Nordic paraskiing program at the National Ability Center in Park City, Utah.
2006 Winter Paralympics: Torino, Italy
Josh Sundquist made his first and only appearance in the Paralympics, competing in the slalom and giant slalom. To stay in shape during the summer before the Games, Sundquist used to ride the elevator to the top level of a parking garage at his college (William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia) and hurtle down the ramps on a roller ski. Recalling the unusual training technique at his blog, he later wrote: “Dangerous? Definitely. A little unhinged? Absolutely. But I did make the team.”
2010 Winter Paralympics: Vancouver, Canada
Two years after Melissa Stockwell became the first Iraq/Afghanistan combat veteran to represent Team USA in the Summer Paralympics, Andy Soule became the first to do so in the Winter Games. And the “firsts” didn’t end there. Soule also became the first American competitor—Olympic or Paralympic—ever to win a medal in biathlon (he took bronze). Soule went on to earn a second bronze medal in 2018. “I look back to my experiences in the Army, and this is sort of, in a way, a way to continue that,” he told National Public Radio.
2014 Winter Paralympics: Sochi, Russia
Snowboarding debuted as a medal sport, giving rise to one of America’s biggest-ever Paralympic superstars: Amy Purdy. Immediately after winning bronze in the inaugural boardercross, Purdy appeared in Season 18 of Dancing With the Stars. Performing on two prosthetic legs, she and partner Derek Hough made it all the way to the finals, finishing in second place. In 2018 Purdy returned to both the Paralympics (winning a silver medal) and Dancing. Her parasports training center in Colorado has become a mecca for a new generation of Paralympic athletes.
2018 Winter Paralympics: PyeyongChang, Korea
Mike Schultz, inventor of the revolutionary Moto Knee and Versa Foot, finally made his Paralympic debut and won two medals in snowboarding (one gold, one silver). They rounded out a trophy case that was already filled with hardware Schultz won at the X Games and as ESPN’s disabled athlete of the year. His game-changing prosthetic system is now used by every elite para snowboarder, and by many athletes in other high-intensity sports.
2022 Winter Paralympics: Beijing, China
Just six months after winning two gold medals in the Summer Paralympics in Tokyo, multisport star Oksana Masters picked up another three golds and four silvers at the Winter Games. The seven-medal haul (in biathlon and Nordic skiing) is the largest ever by an American in a single Paralympics. Masters went on to defend her two Summer golds in 2024. She enters the 2026 Games with 14 career medals in Winter Paralympic competition, the highest total in US history.
