Sandy Dukat
Competition | 2024
Although Sandra Dukat was nominated for induction into the Move United Winter Sports Hall of Fame, she was a versatile, multi-sport, multi-season athlete. Born with proximal femoral focal deficiency, Sandy had her right leg amputated above the knee at the age of four. However, that never slowed her down as she grew up competing in able-bodied sport, playing basketball, doing the high jump in Track and competed on her high school swim team. She learned about the potential opportunities for her in Paralympic sports when she contacted the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.
After attending the Disabled Sports USA The Hartford Ski Spectacular in 1997, Sandy committed to training 6 months of each year at the National Sports Center for the Disabled in Colorado. She went on to win two bronze medals in alpine skiing at the 2002 Winter Paralympics in Salt Lake City. At the 2004 IPC Alpine Skiing World Championships, she won bronze medals in 3 events; Downhill, Giant Slalom and Super-G, finishing fifth overall. Sandy also won one bronze medal at the 2006 Winter Paralympics in Turin, Italy.
Sandy ran her first marathon in January 2009. With a time of 4:40:46, she was the first female above-knee amputee to finish a marathon in less than 5 hours. In Triathlon racing, she won the women’s Above Knee division of the USA Triathlon Paratriathlon National Championships in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. In 2008, she represented the USA at the ITU Triathlon World Championships in Vancouver. And in 2008 Sandy became World Champion in her above knee impairment classification and was named USA Triathlon Para Triathlete of the Year.
In addition, Sandy served on the Board of Directors of Disabled Sports USA for many years.
