Hockey Sled used by Chris Douglas of the USA Hockey Paralympic team

Custom made ice hockey sled used by Chris Douglas while trying out for the USA Paralympic hockey team and throughout his career with his Florida based team, the Space Coast Ice Bandits. The 'sled' consists of a molded plastic seat lined in velara. The seat is bolted to a metal pipe frame which has a set of blades attached to the bottom. There is a white plastic U-shaped piece attached to the bottom front of the sled and touches the ice to balance the sled. Chris' sled has a duct tape shelf two thirds up the front of the sled to rest his legs on. The hockey sleds offeres Douglas greater mobility on the ice. He rests his lower body on the metal structure and uses shortened hockey sticks to propel himself.

Chris Douglas was born with spina bifida, a birth defect that left his spine underdeveloped, and led a relatively active childhood until a corrective spinal cord surgery in March of 2001 left him paralyzed. As a result, his involvement with adaptive sports didn’t begin until 2011 at age 19. Constantly fine-tuning his equipment to stay competitive and fit his specific needs, Douglas became an unexpected innovator and an advocate for technological advancements in adaptive sports equipment. With Douglas as a starting forward, Team USA won the gold at the 2015 International Paralympic Committee Ice Sled Hockey World Championship.

The first Paralympic Games were held in Rome in 1960, a week after the Summer Olympics. This tradition of holding the games for athletes with disabilities after the Olympics continues today. These first games were for wheelchair users only, but in 1976 athletes with other disabilities were welcomed. In that same year adaptive athletes from the Winter Olympics were also embraced. The 1996 games in Atlanta marked a turning point as the first games to fully include the Paralympic athletes and events under the Team USA banner.

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