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The stuntman has left the arena

By Ben Smailes, Canmore Leader Stacy Kohut is taking down his Evil Knievel poster.

By Ben Smailes,

Canmore Leader

Stacy Kohut is taking down his Evil Knievel poster. The world-famous image of the man and his motorcycle that once hung proudly on Kohut’s living-room wall "an ode to the ultimate stunt" is being packed away.

Kohut’s also breaking down his sit ski setup, folding up his four-wheel downhill mountain bike machine and putting his assortment of Paralympic and World Championship medals into cardboard boxes. They’re being packed away too, and crammed with the rest of his possessions into his mini van.

One of the Bow Valley’s most renowned disabled athletes and excessive stuntmen, Kohut is leaving town.

"I’m going somewhere where I can find a job," he says, resigned in his wheelchair but as animated as ever from his soon to-be-vacated two-bedroom Canmore apartment.

After eight years living and training in the Bow Valley the 31-year-old Paralympic sit skier and champion four-wheel mountain biker is uprooting to Whistler, B.C. He left via the Trans Canada Highway with a convoy of professional bikers and cycle mechanics on May 1.

Kohut says an opportunity to work with other disabled athletes and adrenaline junkies as well as less rigid restrictions on mountain biking is what’s wooing him west.

He plans to work with the Whistler Adaptive Ski Program next winter and is excited about the mountain resort’s bid to host the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Whistler is enhancing its disabled alpine program partly because of the resort town’s desire to fly the Olympic rings. But ultimately Whistler promises what Kohut says the Bow Valley can only stall him on.

"The direction’s not the same," he says.

"Growing up as a kid in Calgary, even from the time I arrived (in the Bow Valley) in 1994 until now, the direction has changed so many times that I can’t with confidence say that (the Bow Valley’s) going in the right direction for Stacy Kohut.

"For me it’s got to be recreation-based and it’s got to be resort-based because my whole life, besides being an athlete, is (about) being truly dedicated to getting more people in wheelchairs as active as possible.

"That’s what’s taking me to Whistler. Not only for an athletic career, but a post-athletic career too. There is no disabled program around here that wants to even begin talking so it’s a chance for me to work and I got to do it."

Taming the evil in the Knievel

Kohut celebrates two birthdays. He was born on Oct. 15, 1970 a healthy baby boy to his parents, Maureen and Don Kohut, in Calgary.

Kohut says he was born again at the age of 21 in the same city when he broke his back while trying to impress his friends by completing a full loop with a few beers in his belly on a playground swing. The date was March 21, 10 years ago.

The accident didn’t change his thirst for extreme stunts. (Kohut used to skateboard competitively as an amateur half-piper before he snapped his spinal cord.) Becoming a paraplegic just focused the way he quenched his adventurous appetite.

"I woke up in that hospital bed thinking, ‘Oh great wheelchair basketball. I’m going to suck at this, or track and field. Are you nuts? I ain’t doing track and field.’ But the stunty, risk taking stuff, I’m really good at," Kohut says.

He has numerous accolades to testify his talent. The first Canadian sit skier to win a Paralympic medal, Kohut has won around a dozen medals and no fewer than five international titles for downhill sit skiing at three successive Winter Paralympic Games and one disabled World Championship, in 1996. He has finished second overall the past two years running in world championship downhill four-wheel mountain biking.

"But all of this, the racing and the medals and the TV and the magazines, that is all pre-meditated on my part," he says.

"I knew lying in that hospital bed 10 years ago that it was tough enough for me to motivate my own self to realize that I’ve got to get back into recreation. And that’s what I’m trying to do, I’m trying to motivate the disabled into becoming active. Active in recreation. Active in community. Active in employment. I’m just trying to lead by example."

Kohut started sharing his message days after he broke his back as a spokesperson and primary case in point for the Alberta-wide Prevent Alcohol and Risk Related Trauma in Youth (PARTY) program.

"I was still actually staying in the hospital, dressed in the hospital clothes when I did my first (volunteer talk)," he says.

"And it was as scary as hell for the first five minutes. But once I realized I could make these kids laugh, I could make them cry, I could make them understand what was happening and I realized, ‘You’re pretty good at this, so you may as well keep going,’ and I’ve been doing it ever since."

Kohut regularly visits classrooms on PARTY’s behalf and speaks to school-aged children about his fate. But these days he is an advocate for controlled risk.

As a 31-year-old, Kohut has endured much in his life. He says he has lost at least five friends in the last 10 years to high risk or alcohol-influenced activities. As a 10-year-old in his wheelchair, he says he still has a lot to learn.

"The biggest thing in a wheelchair is you have to help people realize that you can be accepted right away," he says.

"Whether it’s speaking to someone in a coffee shop or in the street. It’s putting them at ease and letting them know that there’s someone there. I’m still kind of figuring that out in a lot of ways."

Kohut says he has failed in helping the Bow Valley figure that out too.

Access to all, a misconception in the Bow Valley

Kohut leaves the Bow Valley with fond memories of an intimate connection with the landscape and its people. But he also walks away from a long-term goal with frustration.

"I’ve been trying for eight long hard years to get the Bow Valley wheelchair accessible," he says.

"But I’ve failed."

Kohut recounts days training at Sunshine Village with the national disabled alpine team, crawling down flights of stairs and across men’s bathroom floors on his hands and stomach amid other people’s urine and pubic hair.

Sunshine is not alone, he says. The mountain resort is merely a reflection of the Bow Valley’s inadequate facilitation for the disabled.

Kohut recalls job hunting in Canmore and Banff, for roles stocking shelves at supermarkets and maintaining campgrounds.

"We don’t hire people like you," he says was perhaps the most demoralizing response, but again, the tone was not uncommon.

"Those first two years especially were tough and I did feel like I failed a lot in getting a job and making the place wheelchair accessible," he says.

"There were many afternoons I’d come home from looking for jobs in the summer in complete tears. It’s like, ‘OK, I’m a (Paralympic) medallist and I represent my country and I’ve had lunch with the prime minister but I still can’t clean the campground toilets because I’m not good enough.’"

Kohut has spent most of his time in the Bow Valley living off Alberta Government welfare. But the Government suspended his disabled benefits three months ago because he says he travels too much.

It wasn’t until Kohut’s fifth summer in the valley, after securing two sit skiing world championships in downhill and super G in 1996, that he says he started to receive acknowledgement of his worth in the community.

"That’s where the breakthrough came for me," he says. "I was starting to see how the community was responding and they were positive and they were supportive and financially, they started to contribute to the cause, but more importantly they started to see there was no real difference. There was no difference between what I was doing or what Thomas Grandi was doing or Edi Podivinsky or Allison Forsyth or anyone. It was ski racing and that’s it."

In 1998 then Town of Banff recreation manager Mary Brewster asked Kohut to become involved in the community’s skateboard program. He was not lacking experience. Kohut says he ran a similar municipal program in Calgary when he was 17.

"What (Brewster) did for my psyche and what the job did for my whole outlook was just killer," he says.

Brewster says she saw in Kohut persistence and a commitment to community when she first met him and agrees the Bow Valley has a long way to go for disabled access and mobility.

"It’s a real challenge here, for sure," Brewster acknowledges.

"In hiring Stacy, our own facility not being wheelchair accessible was a challenge right off the bat."

The town arranged for portable toilet facilities with wheelchair accessibility, specifically to accommodate Kohut.

"But in my mind it was not nearly enough," she says.

"Despite his situation he seems to rise above the chair and the challenges he encounters daily through his spirit and his energy. His part in the PAARTY program, the way he goes about his outdoor pursuits, with sit skiing and downhill mountain biking, have had a real impact on children in the Bow Valley.

"It’s a real loss for our community and a gain for Whistler, to get someone with Stacy‚s energy and talent."

Although Kohut’s Evil Knievel poster has come down in Canmore his stuntman spirit will live on in the Bow Valley.

"I’ll be back," he says.

"It’s not like I’m dead. I’m going somewhere where I can find a job and I will be back for training and I’ll be back to speak to the next group of ninth graders."

And it’s not like he’s ungrateful for the support he has received on the Alberta side of the Rockies.

"I have affected so many young disabled people’s lives for the better and none of it would have been possible without the complete support in all forms from the entire community," he says.

"I thank everyone in the community for letting me have a chance to explore my dreams so that other kids can dream too. Because that’s all I’m doing – I’m helping them dream and I’m helping them understand what’s going on. Every time I’m out there on the hill sit skiing or on the four wheeler, I win."