Chris Waddell
Competition | 2006
Hometown: Park City, Utah
School Name: Middlebury College
While attending Middlebury College in Vermont, Chris Waddell was a member of the Panther ski team. He crashed during a run and sustained a serious spinal cord injury, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Just a few years after his accident, he was named to the U.S. Disabled Alpine Ski Team and remained on Team USA for eleven years.
The rare Paralympian who competed and excelled in both the Winter and Summer competitions, Chris competed in Albertville, France in the1992 Games; Lillehammer, Norway in 1994 Winter Games; Atlanta in the 1996 Summer Paralympic Games; Nagano, Japan in the 1998 Winter Games; in the Sydney Paralympic Games in 2000; in the Salt Lake City Winter Games in 2002; and the Athens Paralympic Games in 2004.
Chris remains one of the most accomplished US Paralympic athletes in the history of the Games. He swept the gold medals in the 1994 Lillehammer Games, winning all four alpine skiing events (Downhill, Giant Slalom, Slalom and Super-G) and securing his name in the history books. Add to those achievements a gold medal in the 1998 Downhill, along with five silver and two bronze medals and his total count for winter medals stands at a daunting 12. In the downhill event, he recorded the fastest time of all classes of mono-skiers, becoming the fastest skier in the world at the time. In addition, Chris won a silver medal in the 200 Meter race in the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney.
Following his retirement from skiing, Chris pursued many interests and career paths. In 2009, he became the first paraplegic to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. He was the inaugural ambassador of the International Paralympic Committee. Chris published several books, did color analysis for NBC Sports and embarked on a career as a motivational speaker.
