Dave Kiley was born in America in 1953 and he loved sport and basketball. In 1973 when he was just 19 years old he and his friends were playing in the snow on the side of a mountain. They were riding down hills on an inner tube and it was here that Dave had his terrible accident. He hit a tree and later, lost the use of his legs. It was a tough blow for the young man. He was going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

Getting better

While recovering in the hospital, Dave was introduced to wheelchair basket ball. He rediscovered his athletic life and used the sport to help him get over the depression of the accident and think about the future. He found that he could use lots of the same skills that he learned before his accident and he started playing wheelchair basketball competitively just two years later.

Olympic success

Kiley became a truly amazing athlete winning a total of 13 Paralympic medals. He was a member of the American Paralympic basketball team six times, winning two golds, a silver and two bronze medals. But Dave didn’t just play fantastic basketball, he also won four gold medals in the 1976 Paralympics in Toronto for racing. In 1992, at the winter Paralympics in France he won two gold and two silver medals for downhill skiing! In the 1992 Summer Paralympic Games in Barcelona, Dave was at the centre of a famous controversy. He failed a drugs test because he had taken a painkiller before a basketball match. As a result both he and the team lost their gold medal.
Other success

Dave is also a champion fisherman, has his own brand of wheelchair and even has trainers that are named after him. In 1982 he climbed a mountain called Guadalupe Peak in Texas with other disabled climbers. He’s clearly a powerful and driven person who wants to achieve. But Dave has been successful in other areas as well as sport. He worked at a rehabilitation centre in California for seventeen years helping people with disabilities by getting them to play sport. Today, programmes like this are common across the world.

Dave today

Dave retired from basketball in 2000 and is now a successful coach. He was an assistant coach for the US Paralympic teams that played in 2004 in Athens and the gold medal winning team in Beijing in 2008. He also works with a company that helps people with physical disabilities gain confidence and self respect through outdoor activities such as skiing, camping, fishing and sailing.

Looking back

Dave is certainly not sad about what happened to him. ‘Because of that accident, I got to play with some of the best athletes in the world and be considered one of them,” he said, “and I got a chance to make a difference in other people’s lives.”

小编：很难想象如果你失去了双腿，会怎么样呢？想像一下，那些你力所不能及的事情。Dave Kiley 在19岁的一次事故中，造成了从腰以下的残疾，然而坚定的意志，使他成为了世界最受称赞的残疾人运动员。很多时候我们都抱怨自己是多么的不幸，不妨看看Dave，他用自己的经历告诉我们，没有什么不可能。