CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy, March 8 - Italian snowboarder Emanuel Perathoner, whose career as an able-bodied athlete ended after a serious training accident in 2021, reinvented himself as a Paralympic competitor — and on Sunday won his first gold medal in snowboard cross on home snow.
The crash marked a dramatic turning point for the 39-year-old athlete from South Tyrol, a northern Italian region near the Austrian border. It prevented Perathoner, who had competed at the Winter Olympics in 2014 and 2018, from attending the Beijing 2022 Games and pushed him to race as an athlete with a physical impairment.
The Milano Cortina Winter Games were a major opportunity for him — and he delivered. “My motto is: never give up, with or without a disability. And I can say this having passed from an Olympic career to a Paralympic one. Sport can do everything,” he told journalists after the race in sun-lit Cortina.
“The track was perfect today. It’s amazing to win here in front of my crowd and my family.”
Perathoner suffered a fractured tibial plateau and underwent a replacement of his left knee, which is now locked at 35–40 degrees, preventing further bending.
