Paralyzed, Alana Nichols thought her athletic career was over. Then she changed her mind.

I've always been a risk taker

I've always been somebody that wants to dance on the line. I started snowboarding when I was in junior high school

Snowboarding was really cool because I hadn't yet discovered what it felt like to be creative as an athlete

The mountain was my canvas. It was like this incredible sense of freedom

I love to go fast. I love to risk it. I love to push the limits

I was sliding down that hill, and I thought, I'm going to try a backflip

And I hit the jump, and I threw my feet as hard as I could over my head. I knew I had overdone it

I ended up landing back first on the snow with my board and my boots over my head

I felt this shock go through my body. It was so loud and confusing inside of me that I didn't know what to make of it

I felt the feeling that I had in my lower body just leave from the waist all the way down and then out my feet

That's when I knew something was terribly wrong. It wasn't long after that that I thought, I must be paralyzed

I was adopted by my grandparents when I was five years old

My dad was actually killed in a drunk driving accident. The lack of structure really was tough for me

And I needed to feel like I belonged somewhere. I belonged in sports

I was so athletic and I had recruits looking at me and offers to go play in college

I was expecting to go off to college and be an athlete and just find myself like every other 17-year-old

any damage I had done to my spinal cord in this accident would be permanent

I was laying there in the hospital bed, giving my lower body the same information I had given it for 17 years

and nothing was happening I would really just stare at my toes like move like move The doctor said you probably will never walk again And I never forget he said you will never ski again

I just remember thinking, this doctor doesn't know who I am. My truth was, if I work hard enough, I can achieve anything

Because that's what sports taught me. After a week laying down in the hospital

I sat up like a baby for the first time. And it felt like as unstable as when you see a babysitting

I had to learn how to get dressed again and get from the bed to my wheelchair

and sit in the wheelchair and push a wheelchair. It was a lot like being reborn again

I think about that 17-year-old. I feel really bad for her sometimes

She needed somebody to tell her it was going to be okay. I didn't have any illusions that I was going to heal my spinal cord

but I thought I would be building muscles, and that wasn't really happening

I felt really alone and misunderstood. I just didn't want to do it anymore

I didn't want to live. My little athletic self, who loved to celebrate her body and how it moved

it was like putting a bird in a cage. It was right around that time when I call this a God moment

I was rolling through the gym at the University of New Mexico, which I had never done before

It was this random shortcut I was taking. And as I entered the gym, I saw this whole group of people playing wheelchair basketball

At this point in my post-injury life and recovery, I had never met anybody in a wheelchair my age

I certainly didn't know that there was adaptive sports or that you could be athletic

If somebody had told me about it my ego would have gotten in the way I would have said I not playing adaptive sports But my jaw was on the floor and I couldn believe what I was seeing because it so fast it so athletic

I needed to see it to believe that people with disabilities could be athletic

At the end of their practice, I remember a girl coming over to me

She looked at me and she said, you look really athletic. Have you ever thought about playing wheelchair basketball

and for a stranger to come up to me and say, you look really athletic

Like, what? I'm in a wheelchair. What do you mean athletic? But she saw it in me, you know, and I was athletic

I am athletic. That part of me never got paralyzed. And that day I got into a basketball chair

and it really changed everything for me. And I pushed it as fast as I could

It was like running again. and I got my heart rate going

and I felt like agile for the first time. And it was just like this real fire in me

that I always had when I saw all of these other people with disabilities

doing the best that they could with what they had. I realized I don't really have an excuse

It really inspired me. I tried bouncing a ball and I bounced it off the wheel

and there was this really tense energy that was happening because I was being really vulnerable and I was taking another risk

I could look at what I had or I could look at what I had lost

Up until that point, I was just so focused on everything I had lost

It was this really subtle transformation that was happening, building my confidence without me even really knowing it

By the end of the first season, that's when I made the Paralympic team

We finally get to Beijing after four years of training, We're in the gold medal game against Germany. When it came to that final match, we put a full

court press on Germany and we wore them out And the buzzer at the end of the game rang and we all completely lost it We lost it so hard We were screaming and crying and crashing into each other and falling over in our wheelchairs

It was incredible to win that gold medal. I thought, you know what would be really fun

I would love to be a ski racer. And I would also love to go to the 2010 Paralympic Games in Vancouver

There I was two years after the Beijing win. I was in Vancouver as a rookie on the Paralympic Alpine ski team

and actually made history becoming the first female American to win gold in the summer and winter games

Thinking about my 17-year-old self laying in a hospital bed, thinking that her life and athletic career was over

because she'd just become paralyzed. She had no idea that not only was it not over

but that it would be bigger and better than she could have ever imagined

As I was untangling so many of the experiences in my life

I had to redefine what my worth was. Before my injury, I didn't really care as much about myself

I didn't value who I was. I think that was really why I was able to take the risks that I did take

including the one that broke my back. and as somebody that has really been to hell and back

I just am so proud of who I am. It was really a struggle to not believe what society says

about people with disabilities, that you're not worthy because you're not able to produce

like an able-bodied person does. And I'm worthy because I am alive and I'm a human

and it doesn't have anything to do with what I look like or how my body functions