Amputee Iraq veteran snowboarding champion

Wounded veteran to snowboarding champion
WTOP.com
By Paula Wolfson
February 24, 2014

WASHINGTON -- He stands tall on his snowboard, maneuvering a championship course with speed and agility.

That snowboard has been his ticket to competitions around the world -- from Colorado to New Zealand. It has also been a driving force in his recovery from the wounds of war.

Capt. Wayne Waldon lost his right leg on the battlefield in Iraq on July 11, 2007. He was airlifted first to a military facility in Germany, and a few days later to what-was-then Walter Reed Army Hospital in D.C.

Once there, he was immediately inspired by the patients who moved around on prosthetics.

"You look at them and you look at you. You pretty quickly stop feeling sorry for yourself and have no excuse," Waldon says.

He was teamed up with Harvey Naranjo, who runs the Adaptive Sports Program at the new Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. It was Naranjo who urged this wounded warrior, once an avid skier, to return to the slopes.

But Waldon, now 30 and retired from the military, opted for the extreme sport of snowboarding, instead. Six months after his injury, fit with a new prosthesis, he headed to his first adaptive sports competition.
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