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From
ESPN:
Snowboarders Amy Purdy and Dan Gale will be competing on the 21st
season of "The Amazing Race," premiering Sunday, Sept. 30 on CBS, the
network announced on Wednesday.
Purdy had both of
her legs amputated beneath the knee when she was 19, after a battle with
bacterial meningitis, and has since gone on to win three consecutive
World Cup gold medals and a string of other titles as a top-ranked
adaptive snowboarder. She is currently training with hopes of joining
the U.S. Paralympic Snowboard team; she won silver at the World
Championships in France in February, sharing the podium with gold
medalist Bibian Mentel of the Netherlands and bronze medalist Sara
Dorigatti of Italy.
"With a lot of hard work and creativity, I guess, I've been able to
go on and become one of the highest-ranked adaptive snowboarders in the
world," she says in an introductory video released by CBS. Purdy and
Gale won't be the first snowboarders featured on the show: Pro
snowboarders Andy Finch and Tommy Czeschin enjoyed a successful run
during Season 19 in 2011, ultimately finishing in fourth place out of 11
teams.
Purdy and Gale co-founded the Adaptive
Action Sports non-profit organization in 2005 and have been instrumental
in bringing adaptive action sports to the X Games and other events,
including the Paralympics. Gale, executive director of the Adaptive
Action Sports organization, has served as sports organizer for X Games
events over the past seven years including Adaptive Moto X, Adaptive
Skateboarding, Adaptive Skier X and Adaptive Snowboarder X. In March it
was announced that Para-Snowboard competition will make its debut at the
2014 Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.
"'The
Amazing Race' is everything that you would expect it to be and more,"
Purdy told ESPN.com on Wednesday. "I think it's going to be a great
platform for my message, which is that it's not really about me trying
to show how able or how capable I am so much as that we're all able,
we're all capable. We all have challenges and we all face adversities.
We all have to adapt. 'The Amazing Race' is perfect for me because it's
all about adventure and travel and taking risks and throwing yourself
out there and challenging yourself. That's what I've been doing with my
life anyways, so it's a beautiful platform to be able to take that to a
bigger audience."
In addition to her record as an
athlete, Purdy is known in the action sports world as one of the faces
of Element Skateboards' Element Eden women's apparel line and a
sponsored rider for Gnu Snowboards, Coal Headwear and Toyota. She is
also sponsored by Freedom Innovations Prosthetics, Prosthetic Orthodic
Associates and Southern California Prosthetics, among others. She was a
featured speaker and skateboarding coach at the National Sports Center
for the Disabled (NSCD) No Barriers Summit in Winter Park, Colo., in
2011, and her 2011 presentation, "Living Beyond Limits," was a hit at
the TEDx Orange Coast conference.
