Colorado Springs – You can try to convince Allison Jones that winning medals in two unrelated sports sounds a little out of reach.
Simply qualifying in two sports sounds hard enough.
But she is not going to listen. Beating the odds is a way of life when you are working with only one leg.
And since she has already been a skier and a cyclist at the Paralympics, picking up a medal in velodrome cycling can’t be far off. London in 2012, at the latest.
Born without a right femur, Jones, 23, has been a mainstay of the U.S. Disabled Alpine Ski team for eight years, with more than enough hardware to prove it.
Gold medals in the downhill, slalom and giant slalom at the 2004 world championships. Silver in the super-G and the giant slalom at the 2002 Paralympics in Salt Lake City. And a Paralympic gold medal in the slalom in Turin.
But the sport she used to stay in shape for skiing season has become her second passion, which is why Jones has been in Colorado Springs participating in a training camp with the Paralympic Cycling National Team.
“I was looking for a cross-training sport to do during the summer, just to be active,” said Jones, who was on the Paralympic cycling team in Athens in 2004. “I had been swimming, but I wasn’t working the same muscle groups.”
Skiing brings strength, cycling brings endurance, and the only conflict is that it is nearly impossible to catch Jones with a free moment.
“From a time standpoint, it becomes a challenge,” Paralympic cycling coach Craig Griffin said. “She gets scheduled to do cycling camps and she gets scheduled to do skiing camps, and at some point they conflict.”
She will be in Colorado Springs until Wednesday, but after that it is off to Oregon for a three-week ski camp, then back on the bike for camps in Los Angeles and Colorado Springs before the world championships Aug. 20-28 in France.
Then it’s back to skiing, one year removed from taking a year’s absence to complete her mechanical engineering degree at the University of Denver.
Right now, Jones is focused on winning Paralympic medals. But after that, Jones plans to put her engineering prowess to good use, designing prosthetics to help disabled athletes reach their potential.
“I see different ways to design things, making things more affordable,” Jones said.
The key is to make prosthetics that enable an athlete to come as close as possible to performing like an athlete without a disability.
For instance, most cyclists stand up to pedal through the tough stretches. With one leg, Jones couldn’t replicate that motion.
At least she couldn’t until a skull session in a restaurant with her dad, when they designed a device that can be attached to her bike and allows Jones to get out of the saddle.
“If anybody else can do it, she wants to know why she can’t do it,” her father, Jay, said in a phone interview. He added, “It’s never been her nature to back off.”
Part of that comes from her mother, Diane, who rarely outlawed any activity, allowing Jones to play soccer, go horseback riding and compete in the high jump in middle school.
“She never closed the door,” Jones said of her mother. “I usually closed the door myself, and found another one to exert my energy on.”
And if a door did seem to slam shut, Jones found a way to open it up again.
Like the time her mom brought home roller blades for her younger sister, Haley, but didn’t bring home a pair for Allison. She was trying to save Allison the disappointment of finding one of the few things she couldn’t do on one leg.
Except that she could.
“I stole my sister’s and went up and down the block like mad,” Jones said. “The next day I got a pair of roller blades.”
Some people just won’t take no for an answer.
Allison Jones
Hometown: Colorado Springs
How she started: Jones started skiing at 5 years old, right after her family moved to Colorado from Texas, and learned to ski in the Winter Park program. She first started cycling in 1998 under Mark Tyson, a coach in Colorado Springs.
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
- Silver medals in the super-G and giant slalom at the 2002 Paralympics in Salt Lake City.
- Four medals at the 2004 World Championships in Austria, including three gold (downhill, giant slalom, slalom) and one silver (super-G).
- Gold medalist in the slalom at the 2006 Paralympics in Turin.
- Five World Cup victories.
Staff writer Joel A. Erickson can be reached at 303-954-1033 or jerickson@denverpost.com.
