Team USA Para Snowboarder Mike Schultz speaks about his experience as a Paralympian, and explains how he shares his entrepreneurial spirit with his competition by creating prosthetics for para athletes.

Video transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

MIKE SCHULTZ: Hey, everybody. I'm Mike, from St. Cloud, Minnesota. I'm with a snowboarding program. I came on board just after Sochi, and I compete in Pyeongchang. And I came home with a gold and a silver. Gold and border cross, and silver and banked slalom. And then another cool part about my program is I actually develop and manufacture the prosthetic legs that I myself wear along with all my teammates that are lower limb amputees.

So I'm always busy having fun on the mountain snowboarding. You know, living my best life as an athlete. After I became an amputee from a snowmobile racing injury I couldn't find the components that would allow me to perform the way I wanted to on my dirt bike and snowmobile. So I created my own to get me back into action there, which evolved into me becoming a snowboarder to teach others how to snowboard with my Moto Knee right behind me.

It's a tool that allows me to move the way I need to. It's-- you know, it's kind of like a shock absorber for my leg. I use a fox mountain bike shock in it. It's just a spring and a shock that absorbs the impact. And with border cross, you know, we're hitting lots of rollers and bumps and jumps and basically it's the suspension that allows me to move the way I do. And hit those big gnarly jumps that we do on the race course.

And, you know, honestly one of the highlights of being part of the Paralympic snowboard program is working with all the other athletes. My teammates and also athletes from around the country. Many of them are my direct competitors and I'm building legs for them in my workshop. And so I guess that's kind of unique for me compared to most athletes as you know I'm a competitor, but also I'm their prosthetic builder.

Me as an athlete, I don't want to have the edge. I want to have the best components out there. But as a businessman I've got to share that technology with some of my competitors as well and hopefully they all are able to compete very well and that raises the bar in adaptive sports and I'm really proud I can be part of that.