AN ACCIDENT CHANGED HIS LIFE
Roy Tuscany lay in the snow at the Mammoth Mountain ski resort in California, paralyzed below the waist, screaming in pain. He had skied too fast on a step-up jump (a jump where the landing point is higher than the takeoff point) and soared 130 feet, falling on his back and fracturing his T12 vertebra. Tuscany was no out-of-control amateur — in 2006, when the accident occurred, he was a 24-year-old professional skier and ski coach, and two weeks earlier he’d easily managed the jump. But this time was different. He was using new skis and the snow was harder, increasing his speed.
“Instead of taking any of that into consideration, I just thought, ‘Oh, I know what I’m doing,’” he
