Nancy Haggerty

nhaggerty@lohud.com

WILMINGTON – Sam Skinner had come off the mountain, his day and his latest Empire State Winter Games race complete.

Limping slightly, he entered a room in the Whiteface lodge that was quickly filling with other competitors.

He’d done okay, he said, and only after being prodded added that winning an Empire States gold medal was “pretty satisfying.”

Others followed him inside with typical tales of the hill — falls, recounted with laughter or scowls, and close calls recalled with wide-eyed, it-could-have-been-really-bad explanations.

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Skinner is 17, a Larchmont resident and a senior at Mamaroneck High. Next year he’ll attend upstate Hobart and William Smith Colleges, where, when not in class (history or political science his likely focus), he plans to race for a local ski team. He chose the school partly because it’s close to Greek Peak.

Skinner doesn’t ski for his high school team because it’s “not that serious” and slope time is limited. But he certainly could, despite being born with cerebral palsy. Because of it, his right knee is slower to respond when he turns and he skis with just one pole, which he holds with his left hand. Early efforts to duct-tape a pole to his weak right hand pretty much proved useless, he said.

Like Skinner, others in the lodge room were adaptive skiers. Some ski upright, like he does. Others, some lacking legs, sit and ride a monoski.

The group attracts the attention of non-disabled skiers, Skinner said. But he added, “For us, it’s like no big deal, I guess. We just ski.”

The Empire State Winter Games represents another opportunity to compete. The sports offered and participant numbers have greatly increased since Lake Placid-area communities and counties took them over after the state, looking to cut costs, bailed on the Games it created.

New Rochelle resident Howard Horowitz, a member of the ESWG Adaptive Committee, recalled that several years ago only about 25 alpine and 12 Nordic adaptive skiers competed. Now there are six adaptive sports with nearly 90 athletes competing just on snow and others in sled hockey.

“There were mostly severely cognitively impaired (people),” Horowitz said of the Empire’s first adaptive skiers, many of whom were pushed down the bunny slope. “It was very quaint and very sympathetic but not very athletic.”

While that category still exists, today’s adaptive focus, which Horowitz spearheaded, is largely on self-sufficient athletes.

Skinner, who was born in England, moved to the U.S. in 2003 and is now a U.S. citizen, competes for Windham Mountain’s Adaptive Ski Foundation racing team, which had seven skiers in this year’s Empire alpine events and eight in biathlon.

He’s also a member of the U.S. Paralympic Development Team.

“The last couple of years he’s gotten bigger, stronger,” said Russ Funk, program coordinator for the Adaptive Sports Foundation at Windham and an International Paralympic Committee ski coach. “He’s shown big improvement over the years.”

That has included being able to control his weak-side ski.

It only took Skinner one day to fall in love with skiing. He was 3 years old when his skiing parents, Canadian-born Corinne Berthiaume and British-born Jon Skinner, coaxed him onto the slopes at Quebec’s Mont Blanc ski area, despite his complaints about the cold.

His mother took him down holding him up between her legs all day before he finally acquiesced to getting his own skis.

Since then, it has been hard to getting him off skis.

Skinner spends most winter school breaks and most weekends December-March at Windham, where he races for the mountain team and does International Paralympic Committee races.

Immediately after leaving Empires, where, competing against racers from across the country, he had three races, his gold coming in an intermediate-level, non-IPC race, Skinner went to Park City Utah for the multiple-day Huntsman Cup competition.

Skinner downplays his accomplishments and said he needs to better his slalom gate entries and exists. But Horowitz characterized him IPC racing as “pretty phenomenal.”

His long-term goals include skiing in Austria and in the French Alps.

But the kid who calls himself “just an athlete” and who has figured out ways to play basketball, baseball, golf and tennis despite his weak hand and leg,” is training on the slopes and in the gym with a bigger prize in mind — making the U.S. Paralympic ski team.

“That’s something I’m really excited about doing,” he said.

Twitter: @HaggertyNancy