Challenged Athletes Foundation Running and Mobility Clinics Changing Lives

The Beginning

On a cool, brisk morning in 2009 with a light marine layer covering the ground in San Diego, a small group of volunteers were placing cones across a field and setting the stage for the first Össur + Challenged Athletes Foundation (CAF) Running and Mobility Clinic. Approximately 60 athletes with limb differences were coming to learn how to run with their prosthetic devices. Over the next three hours, every athlete learned to run, made new friends, and attained the knowledge that they could return to exercise and sport. Since those early days, 80 of the free clinics have been hosted across the United States with an average of 35-50 athletes in attendance at each clinic, so thousands of athletes have learned how to improve their athletic abilities. To put that in prospective, in the years prior to the start of the clinics, there were probably no more than a few hundred runners using a prosthesis.