Паралимпиец Майк Шульц создал собственные протезы для экстремальных видов спорта

Paralympian Mike Schultz craves adrenaline. The rush he gets when he’s kicking dirt on a motocross bike, shredding moguls on a snowmobile, or catching air on a snowboard is thrilling. But that’s not why he competes. What he really seeks from extreme sports is self-improvement. “I’ve had a long career in competitive sports, and what keeps me motivated is the process of progression,” Schultz says. “Every time I’m on a bike, a snowmobile, a snowboard, I’m trying to learn something so I can be better.” That pursuit nearly broke him in 2008: Schultz was competing in snocross when he was thrown from his snowmobile and fractured his left knee. Despite multiple surgeries, doctors had to amputate his leg above the injury. When he began using a prosthetic leg soon thereafter, its limitations were obvious. “The first one I got was a basic free-swing hinge,” Schultz recalls. “It would swing when I walked, but if I got it wrong, it would just collapse and I’d fall over.” Schultz didn’t just want to walk. He wanted to compete again. But existing prosthetics didn’t support the squatting positions his favorite action sports demand. So, he decided to make his own prosthetic. “I went full ‘mad scientist’ in my garage,” continues Schultz, who used his experiments to establish the company BioDapt in 2010. His first product—a prosthetic knee called the Moto Knee—uses a high-pressure mountain bike shock absorber to mimic quadricep muscles by stabilizing an athlete’s stance and absorbing heavy impacts. It provides the range of motion athletes need to stand up and sit down on a bike or snowmobile. His next product, a foot-ankle contraption called the Versa Foot, provides the same shock absorption for sports that demand toe pressure and ankle tension, like snowboarding. Using his own creations, Schultz has won four Paralympic and seven World Championship medals, not to mention 10 X Games gold medals across three different sports. Meanwhile, over 90% of lower‑limb athletes competing in Para snowboarding competitions use BioDapt’s products, and more than two dozen used them to compete this year at the Paralympic Winter Games in Italy. Schultz says his proudest moments are when athletes try his prosthetics for the first time. “Once they understand how to move in it and what it allows them to do, it opens a huge door for them and puts a big ole smile on their face, just like I had when I tested it for the first time.” To date, BioDapt has sold nearly 2,000 units, according to Schultz, who retired from the U.S. Paralympic snowboard team this year to focus on his business. In partnership with technology company Autodesk, he’s currently working on new equipment to help athletes train for the 2028 Summer Paralympic Games in Los Angeles. “Para athletes today are doing things nobody thought would be possible 10 years ago,” Schultz says. “It’s been awesome to be part of that.”