Elite athletes do the seemingly impossible all the time: make one-handed catches, drain distant three-pointers, hit game-winning home runs with two outs and two strikes. Staring down adversity and pressure is simply part of the job description.
Alana Nichols has been an elite athlete her whole life, but there's a key difference between her and the Lindsey Vonns and Steph Currys of the world. Sure, she's a champion like they are -- three times a gold medalist, five medal wins overall and the first American woman to win gold in both the Summer and Winter Games (in basketball and alpine skiing). But she has done it all from a wheelchair. In 2000, when Nichols was 17, a snowboarding accident left her paralyzed from the waist down. She reckoned -- not without reason -- that not only were her Collegiate scholarships eliminated, as were her Olympic softball dreams over, but her athletic life as a whole.
Alana Nichols, five-time Paralympic dual-sport medalist, pioneer in sprint kayaking and surf enthusiast photographed in San Diego, CA © Ian Spanier 2016
One day not long after, she took a chance detour through the gym at the University of New Mexico, where she was a student, and came across a five-on-five game of wheelchair basketball. It took her some time to get the hang of it, but she stuck with it -- and, regaining some of her old aptitude, soon began to excel. Success on the hard court sparked her determination to return to the slopes, giving her the rare distinction of being a dual-sport Paralympic medal athlete.
Even her difficulties have silver linings these days: After what she calls a "rough go" at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, Nichols took a much-needed vacation in Hawaii. There, through a connection, she began pursuing two watersports: surfing and sprint kayaking. Already, she has become the first woman ever to win an adaptive-surfing heat.
The ocean has long been heralded for its healing properties, and so it has been for Nichols, whose move into the water has given her yet another element to conquer. Her next goal: getting to the medal podium in sprint kayaking in the 2016 Olympics in Rio.