Staff Sgt. Heath Calhoun (ret.) won his first national title in the Super G event at the 2009 U.S. Adaptive Alpine National Championships, March 28-April 2.
A bilateral transtibial amputee who lost both legs in Iraq when a rocket-propelled grenade hit his convoy in 2003, Calhoun shreds the slopes on a sit ski and uses prostheses to walk, cycle, and drive a car with a manual transmission. He is currently in training toward qualifying for a spot on the U.S. Paralympic ski team. He spends much of his time in Snowmass, Colorado, with the organization Challenge Aspen, which is part of a U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) program that allows military veterans interested in preparing for the Paralympics to be resident-athletes at various USOC-affiliated training sites. Calhoun is team captain of the USOC Veterans Paralympic Performance Program (VP3) Alpine Skiing Program at Challenge Aspen.
