Speed! Is it Better One Legged or Two?

2 One-legged skier eyes able-bodied recordA young boy learnt 

to ski when he was three years of age and at nine years 

his left leg was removed because of a malignant cancer of the

bone

'Will I be able to ski?'

It was the only question nine-year-old Michael Milton cared about when the doctors told him he would lose his leg to bone cancer. Michael grew up in a skiing family and was on the snow from just three years of age. 'Skiing was my priority and when they showed me a video of a one-legged guy skiing, I knew what I wanted to do,' said Michael.

THE frustration was so acute; the pressure of being so profoundly different in the eyes of his school peers was so intense that Michael Milton reacted with a desperate cry for help.

He grabbed the leg prothesis that helped him walk and threw it out of a school window.

He saw the prothesis he wore to replace his amputated leg as the focus of all his problems. A lightweight metal frame that made him a prisoner of scorn and name-calling.

"I don't want this metal thing. I want a real one made out of flesh and bone that works properly and that I can run with," he remembers thinking.

"There were certainly some pretty tough times learning to deal with having just one leg.

"Being different makes you a target for bullies and childhood pranks."

He was just 14 when he skied in his first international competition - the 1988 winter Paralympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria.

All these years later Milton is still a target.

Every paralympic skier in the world is trying to catch him. So is any able-bodied skier in Australia.

He has achieved greatness despite confronting two separate cancers so rampant they would have crushed the spirit of anyone not possessed by a raging inferno of determination.

Milton ignored losing a leg to achieve unparalleled greatness as a skier.

He won gold, silver and bronze at the 1996 world disabled titles. At the 2002 Paralympics he won all four categories he entered - a first by anyone.

Lack of sponsorship, a family to support and limited commercial chances convinced Milton to move into speed skiing.

That's the Formula One of skiing, where co-ordination, balance and courage have to simultaneously converge to avoid disaster while racing at more than 200km/h on one leg against a sense-confounding background of white.

It turns out Milton could teach a runaway avalanche about coming down icy slopes at breakneck speed.

His open Australian record is 213km/h - the best by any skier on two skis or one.

Milton skied as if they amputated fear from his senses along with his cancerous leg when he was nine.

Speed skiing is not just about the 20 seconds of descent. Speed skiing is a lifestyle; it is membership of an intimate family of slightly eccentric characters who are bonded together by a common goal, a quest for experiences and a thirst for life. There are dangers but each racer minimizes these to maximize their own enjoyment.

Since the new track has been running is Les Arcs (15 seasons) there have been many thousands of speed ski runs and very few accidents...and even fewer serious injuries.

He says the battle is more psychological. "A successful speed skier is about being able to keep your mind under control. To keep that fear boxed in the back of your head," he says.

"I'd always been a bit scared of speed. I'm very proud of being able to overcome my fears."

His rock is his wife Penni - they married last year when she laughingly proposed to him on her 40th birthday with a flower in one hand and their one-year-old daughter Matilda in her arms.

Disabled competitors hate talking about why their lives went askew.

It happened. It's over. Life goes on and so do they, gloriously.

Milton simply came home from school one day with a pain in his leg. His parents took him to hospital and his busy, promising and gloriously unexplored world of butterflies, football, bike-riding and wonderment ended.

"Michael had a cancer which was an osteogenic sarcoma. It was very rare in a child of nine," said his mother Rosemary. "The X-ray they took actually looked like a leg with a bite out of it."

His father John found himself in the unimaginable hell of being powerless to help his son.

"The thing I was afraid of more than anything else was Michael saying: 'Oh dad, don't let them take my leg off.'

"You know (he's) looking to me to protect him."

All Michael thought through the turmoil and pain was: "When it's over I'm going skiing with my dad."

The winter after the operation Michael was on the slopes re-learning the skiing skills he was first taught aged three.

Now, unbelievably and cruelly, Michael is facing new troubles.

He was on course to make Australia's team for the Beijing Paralympics as a cyclist after switching sports and winning two gold medals at the national titles when fate, that most fraudulent of tricksters, intervened.

Michael was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus, totally unrelated to his leg cancer but equally lethal.

He had a six-hour operation involving three doctors that was successful but limiting.

"'The reality is that he has half the stomach he had before. (His) capacity to absorb essential nutrients is limited," says his coach John Armstrong.

Michael says: "My prognosis is somewhere between 80 and 90 per cent chance of living for five years.

"I'm in remission now and hopefully they will declare me cancer-free in five years.

"It's always a little bit of a cloud hanging over your head to not know in the future whether it's going to come back and whether you've got to fight it again.

"I definitely haven't given up on Beijing but I know the sort of times I'm going to have to run to qualify are a long way ahead of where I've ever been before."

Courage mostly comes in a short, sharp electric jab that momentarily overrides rational thinking and personal safety.

It's a rush of superpowered adrenalin that makes soldiers defy death to rescue a mate under fire and bystanders dive in to wrestle a victim from a shark.

That sort of courage can never be devalued. But there is a another type of bravery that is not so dynamic. It requires unrelenting commitment, mostly in private.

"I don't think we have really high aspirations," says Penni. "We just want to have a nice life and enjoy it with Matilda and watch her grow and grow old together."

September 12, 2005 - 9:59AM

In the conventional world of sport, men don't compete against women and disabled athletes don't take on the able-bodied.

It's all about competing on a level playing field.

But somebody forgot to tell one-legged Australian snow skier Michael Milton.

Not content with being the fastest skier on one leg, clocking 210.4kph at Les Arcs, France, last April, the 32-year-old now has his sights on Nick Kirshner's 1997 Australian able-bodied record of 212.26kph.

Having to do it on one leg instead of two doesn't seem to faze Milton who lost his left leg to bone cancer as a nine-year-old.

"I've still got some major improvements in me and I certainly feel with such a small gap - less than 2kph - that it's very, very possible," Milton said in an interview.

"I'm really excited as an athlete with a disability about the potential to hold an Australian open record."

Kirshner said.

"What he's doing is incredible. The important message here is if anybody thinks they can't do something, they ought to think again. ."Obviously he can not get his skis crossed. quipped Kirshner, who's known Milton for about 20 years.

"Speed skiing on one leg is definitely a disadvantage for a normal mortal but not for Michael Milton," You try and do squats on one leg and see how you go. You'd probably fall over. Michael Milton doesn't and that's the difference.

"That's why he's the achiever and champion athlete that he is."

Then again After spending years soaring down mountains, Milton this week began his first attempt at climbing 6,000 metres up one of them, tackling Africa's highest peak, Mt Kilimanjaro.

He's expected to reach the summit mid-week.

"I haven't ever skied much above 4,000 metres so it's something that's going to be different," he said before leaving for Tanzania.

"I enjoy challenging myself, whether they be mental challenges or physical ones."

The climb began an eight-month campaign of challenges which will include his Australian record bid in April and his third and last Paralympics in Turin, Italy, in March.

He also plans to walk the Kokoda track next June.

Milton will defend four alpine ski racing titles in Turin - slalom, giant slalom, super G and downhill.

As Australia's most successful winter paralympian with 10 medals, including six gold, he has a list of sponsors surpassing many able-bodied athletes including Flight Centre, Toyota, Thredbo and more recently, Skins sportswear.

© 2005 AAP

earned him the title of World Sportsperson of the Year with a

Disability. Then last week in France Michael set a new open

Australian speed skiing record, clocking an amazing 213.65km/hr.

He is now the fastest Australian skier ever.

It was only Michael's fourth season in the sport that has replaced

ski racing. In his rookie year (2003), he became the world's

fastest skier on one leg when he skied at over 193km/hr,

smashAustralian Capital Territory Finalists 2007

AUSTRALIAN OF THE YEAR - ACT

Michael Milton OAM

Speed skier

Michael Milton says that having only one leg is not an obstacle, it's just part of who he is. In April 2006, in France , Michael set a new open Australian speed skiing record, clocking an amazing 213.65km/hr. He is now the fastest Australian skier ever and first person ever with a disability to ski over 200km/hr. He is a twelve times gold medallist in six Paralympics and six World Championships, and a champion for children's charities. Michael has been skiing the slopes since he was three and doing it on one leg since he lost the other one to bone cancer when he was nine. His achievements between then and now are truly remarkable. He was a Paralympian at fourteen. At the 2002 Salt Lake Games he won a clean sweep of all four alpine skiing gold medals, and that same year was named World Sportsperson of the Year with a Disability. Michael has overcome his natural shyness to become a talented public speaker. He has achieved at the highest levels and never stops planning to meet the next challenge.

lhomeSkier, cyclist, adventurer, world and Australian record holder, Paralympian, Olympian....

Michael Milton is one of Australia's best-known athletes. His four-gold-medal haul at the 2002 Winter Paralympic Games endeared him to a sport-loving nation and earned him the title of Laureus World Sportsperson of the Year with a Disability.

In April 2003 Michael tried something new: speed skiing, the drag racing of alpine sport. Skiing on the steepest slope in the world, Michael became the world's fastest skier with a disability when he skied at over 193km/hr, smashing a world record unchallenged for 16 years.

Every year after that he bettered his own world record until, in April 2006, he clocked a staggering 213.65km/hr to also become the fastest Australian skier ever.

A month earlier at the 2006 Winter Paralympic Games in Torino Italy (his fifth Paralympic Games) Michael's ski racing career came to an end. Under a new, tougher classification system, he won a silver medal in the Downhill, achieving his goal to "...win a medal, any colour." His ski racing medal count stands at eleven Paralympic medals (six gold) and eleven World Championships medals (six gold).

Milton is now pursuing a new sport: cycling. After six months of intense training, he not only won a gold medal in the 3000m Pursuit at the Australian Track Cycling Championships in February 2007 but also broke the Australian record.

His dream to make the Australian team and compete at the 2008 Beijing Paralympic Games were sidelined when he was diagnosed with Oesophageal Cancer in July 2007. He has since made an amazing comeback from this serious illness, recording times at the 2008 Australian Track Cycling Championships comparable to his results in the same events 12 months ago.

Michael John Milton

Born: 21 March 1973, Canberra

Lives: Canberra, Australia

Just a quick note to thank all the people who offered their support and well-wishes when I was diagnosed withOesophageal Cancer.

The treatment and surgery went well but my recovery continues. I wont be officially cancer-free until I have reached the five-year mark. In the meantime, I am back training as hard as I can in an effort to qualify for Beijing. It's tough and it's a long shot but I'm willing to give it a go.

If you're interested in keeping up with my progress, pleasesubscribeto receive my monthly e-newsletter.

Thank you so much for your kindness and support.

Michael Milton.

ater he broke that record three times in two days, clocking

198.68km/hr, agonisingly short of his 200km/hr goal... or, as

Michael says, "1/14,000th of a second too slow!"

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