Kevin Bramble: Sitting Tall
For the first twenty-one years of his life, Kevin Bramble was the adrenaline equivalent of Mikey, the Life Cereal kid. Have a roof to jump off? Kevin will do that. A cliff to huck? Kevin will do that. A dangerous wave to surf? Kevin will do that. Ironic, then, that the biggest mistake of Kevin Bramble's life came on a stunt even he wasn't sure was a good idea.
On that night in 1994 in South Lake Tahoe, Bramble wasn't even on one of the area's famed mountains-just a cliff in the neighborhood. While his buddy Ken stood at the bottom with a camera, Bramble noticed that the snow cover seemed awfully thin. "I said to the girl standing next to me, 'I don't know if I should be up here,'" Bramble says now. But when he shouted down to assess the conditions, Ken's response of "No! No!" sounded like "Go! Go!" Bramble hit rocks on the way off the cliff; swan dived, and landed with he legs over his head like a scorpion.
"That was that," he says.
Rhyming words. They put Mother Goose on the map and keep Hallmark afloat. And they, along with a heaping dose of terrible judgment, put Kevin Bramble in a wheelchair. And because he refused to let paralysis paralyze him, putting him in a wheelchair created someone who helped change the idea of what handicapped athletes can do.
During his 18-month stint in a body cast, Bramble plunked down three grand for his first sit ski, essentially a ski mounted to a seat outfitted for handicapped athletes, sight unseen. Since then, he's become among the most decorated disabled skiers on the planet, with downhill golds in the Salt Lake and Torino Paralympics, and a World Cup downhill title in '04. But Bramble didn't allow himself to be pigeonholed into the race-centric world of disabled skiers. Proving you can take the legs away from a snowboarder without taking away his mentality, Bramble learned to ride his sit ski in the park and the pipe. He took it into the powder, a unique set of challenges for a rider sitting only 14 inches above the ground ("If it's a two foot pow day, you do the math," he says), then the cliffs. He got so good, Warren Miller brought him to Alaska for the 06 film Off The Grid, where he laid down what are likely the first-ever big-mountain sit ski lines every attempted.
Stop there, and it's the kind of sweet sounding story Disney would love (the affable, open skier would make good popcorn fodder). Except you can't. Bramble will tell you that in the 13 years since his accident, he's become more attuned to risk. But Bramble has also bungeed himself to a motorcycle and got a ways from home before discovering that his leg was stuck against the tailpipe and burning. Stopping would have tipped him over, so he just kept going. He also brags about his stair-running record (currently at 17) and the time in Torino when Italian military police clocked him going downhill at 60 mph before his wheelchair hit a pothole. Bramble won Gold last winter with some serious road rash.
Bramble isn't any angel off the mountain, either. His extracurricular activities have invited comparisons to that other impresario of Olympic nightlife: Bode Miller.
But there's a method to the madness. Bramble has spent the last thirteen years of his life proving to himself he's the same guy he was in the first twenty-one. That means pushing himself to try whatever is in front of him, even if it's a staircase. "It's better to live life than never experience 98 percent of the good stuff because you're afraid of the two." It's why in addition to designing his own sit skis (11 of 16 racers Saturday will ride Bramble-designed models) he's working on a prototype mountain bike. And it's why he has no patience for those who assume or patronize him because of his condition.
"I'll be sitting in the lift line and somebody will come snowplowing up, all weekend warrior, and say, 'Oh, you're better at that than I am!' You ski three weekends out of the year, and you want to compare yourself to me, just because I'm sitting down and you're standing up? The reason I'm better than you is because I practice, and I have skills." It's why he chafes at the Miller comparisons. Miller, he says, doesn't build his own gear. Or ski big mountain. Or the park. Or win gold. "I'd rather be compared to Laird Hamilton or Mat Hoffman," Bramble says. "Someone who's changed the face of their sport forever."
Maybe he has mellowed a little. Since meeting his (eventual) wife Leslie a couple Christmases back, the road rash and tailpipe burns have diminished considerably. He admits he only hits big jumps now when he has to. "Years ago, I used to blow off of everything. I called it fifth gear jacket ripple, where you're going so fast your jacket goes thwap, thwap, thwap, thwap. I'm over it now."
Almost. If Bramble finds himself behind as he makes his way down the Skier X course Saturday, he says he'll hit the jumps along the way, as opposed to steering around them and riding the rollers. Why? Because he'll go faster. Two years ago, when Monoskier X made it debut, Bramble was ahead near the bottom when a broken binding ended his run. This year, he wants a different result. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't think I could win."
Some things even a good woman can't cure.
