Mike Schultz - Driven to Ride: The True Story of an Elite Athlete Who Rebuilt His Leg, His Life, and His Career

To my wife and No. 1 teammate, Sara, for always standing by my side through the triumphs and challenges since the beginning. To my daughter, Lauren; you make us so proud and I cant wait for all the future adventures we will have together.

Contents

Foreword by David Wise

I met Mike Schultz for the first time in the athlete lounge at X Games in January 2016. We were both competing at that X Games, so the athlete lounge was the simplest place to meet up. In my career as a professional halfpipe skier, Ive been lucky enough to win every title available in my sport and rubbed elbows with the A-list elite from various realms. Some celebrities are excellent humans, and some of them are people you could not pay me to spend time with. Fame does not impress me much, but when I met Mike, I felt like a giddy fanboy. We all have our sports heroes, but I admired Mike for a lot more than just his accomplishments on the world stage.

My sister Christy was a few months out from an accident which resulted in an above-knee amputation. I had been doing research on sports alternative prosthetics for Christy and stumbled across a company called BioDapt that made motocross-inspired prosthetics with Fox Shox and even ski-specific prosthetic feet and ankles. The deeper I dug into the company and its founder, the more impressed I was. Many professional athletes start their own brands, but most of those companies are focused on profit or self-glorification. BioDapt was clearly focused on helping adaptive athletes by offering something that was not available. BioDapt is filling a hole created by the prosthetic industrys relationship with insurance companies, and athletic amputees all over the world benefit. I was excited to meet the man behind the Moto Knee that I hoped would help my sister ski like herself again.

Christy is a very active person, and I can attribute a lot of my success to her and her twin sister, Jessica, pushing me as a youngster. I could always count on Christy to be willing to try any sport or adventure. I knew one of the most difficult parts of her injury was going to be the limitations on activities. Early on as an amputee, Christy had to face the sense of loss surrounding things that she would not be able to do anymore. My goal as her brother and lifelong adventure buddy was to try to keep her focused on what she could do. Because of Mike and his prosthesis, Christy was able to add carving turns on skis to that list. We went out skiing as a group and I will never forget the look on my sisters face as she and Mike finally got the settings right and she was able to link race-quality turns again.

I have had the good fortune to spend some quality time with Mike since that first X Games, and my admiration for him has only grown. I think that the best way to measure the true depth of a man is to watch how he interacts with his wife and kids. Mike has a list of accomplishments that could easily fit on the rsum of two or three people, yet he hasnt accomplished those things at the cost of his closest relationships. Many of the competitively dominant sports figures and businesspeople that I know put their career before their family; they see it as the only way to get ahead in a fast-paced world. What Mike and Sara have accomplished together is the opposite of that. Rather than turn away from each other to get ahead, they chose to lean on each other and build something meaningful together.

Not only have Mike and Sara survived a traumatic injury and the resulting financial duress that would have put any marriage to the test, but they have also learned to thrive together through it. Together they have started a company that is making permanent change in adaptive athletes lives and in the prosthetic industry. They have built a professional adaptive motocross career, a professional adaptive snocross career, and now a professional adaptive boardercross career. How can one guy do so many things? Mike obviously has a titanium force of will and a work ethic that could put anyone to shame, but he also has a partner with strengths and qualities to mirror and complement his own. This is not just a story of one man overcoming adversity; it is a saga of a young couple banding together and persevering in spite of the odds. Believe me when I tell you that we can all learn a lot from the story between these pages. Prepare to stretch your sense of gratitude, grow your threshold for what adversity is, and expand your concept of what selfless love looks like.

Few people understand how difficult competing for Team USA in the Olympics or the Paralympics can be on the athletes family. Baseball, football, and hockey athletes and their families are treated like royalty everywhere they go, but Olympic athletes are often lucky if they get a discount on lodging or food. No journey to the Olympics or Paralympics can happen without immense sacrifice by the athletes family. (My wife sometimes comments that she feels like a military wife because its as if I am deployed while traveling the world when the snow is falling.) When the athlete wins a gold medal, people will view the sacrifice as worth it, but what if the athlete doesnt even make finals or has a bad race during the medal round? Our families support us knowing that there is no guarantee that we will win gold. They support us because they know that going out there and doing what we were made to do is necessary for us. Not doing so would be like denying a large piece of us. People like Mike are born with an exceptional need to compete. You could call it a competitive fire. What Sara exemplifies is how to support someone with that fire without resentment. With Saras support, Mike has the freedom to shamelessly be Monster Mike, and he is a much better man for it.

Whether it is on a snowboard, a snowmobile, or a dirt bike, watching Mike ride shows me that racing is his calling. Mike is the perfect embodiment of the word adaptive. Mike doesnt look disabled when he races; he could still smoke me in most races (though I havent seen him in a halfpipe yet). When I see Mike race, I can tell that he just loves to go fast and fly high, the same way I do. The machines or boards that he rides are just mediums to help him go faster and fly higher. The fact that he is missing a good portion of his leg isnt a limit, it is just an adjustment that needs to be overcome. What Mike proves to me is that I need to reassess what I see as a limit or what I might feel like is impossible. Most of the things in life that we believe are impossible are that way because someone said so, or because no one else has done it yet. I am sure that Mike and Sara heard plenty of things were not going to be possible post-injury. I am thankful that they chose not to listen and decided to find out what they could do together.

David Wise

Olympic freeski halfpipe gold medalist, 2014 and 2018

Reno, Nevada

September 2021

Prologue

Good timber does not grow with ease

The stronger wind, the stronger trees

Good Timber, Douglas Malloch

Its December 2008, and Im lying in a bed at St. Marys Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota, with my entire family gathered around me. Groggy and stunned, I try to concentrate on what a doctor is telling me.

Through a drug-induced haze, I hear him say that circulation in my left leg has been compromised, and blood is pooling in my foot. I look down at my toes, plump and discolored. I cant move them, not even a millimeter, no matter how hard I try. He tells me that my kidneys are shutting down. He tells me that, best case scenario, Im looking at 20 surgeries in the next year, and I still might never use my leg again.