When\u00a0Brian Bartlett<\/a>\u00a0was 24 he was hit by a car from behind so hard it ripped his right leg off instantly. It all happened so fast. He doesn\u2019t like to talk about it. \u201cYou really can\u2019t understand,\u201d he told me. \u201cThere\u2019s just no way to\u2026until you have an injury where you\u2019re ripped or cut apart instantly.\u201d<\/p>\n He turned 25 in the hospital. When he left, fitted above the knee with a prosthetic leg, he wanted to return to his life. Before the accident, Brian had been a competitive skier; he had a sponsorship, and he was on track for the US Olympic team. So after the accident, he was eager to get back to the slopes. It was 1998, long before Oscar Pistorius would take the track at the Olympics or Amy Purdy would take the stage on Dancing with the Stars. When he asked his prosthetist about getting back into skis, he wasn\u2019t ready for what he heard. He was told he wouldn\u2019t ski again, not the way he had before.<\/p>\n The best way to get Brian to do something is to tell him that he can\u2019t. Within a year of the accident, Brian was back on the slopes, skiing with disabled ski teams. In his first year he made it to the International Paralympic Committee\u2019s Alpine Skiing World Cup, and came in seventh in the world. But it wasn\u2019t enough. It wasn\u2019t the same. \u201cIt just didn\u2019t fill the need,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s not that I didn\u2019t like the disabled sports, it just wasn\u2019t like it used to be.\u201d Brian was back on the mountain using what\u2019s called three-track skis \u2013 skiing on one leg, using poles that have tiny skis at the end and are used as outriggers.<\/p>\n He has trouble remembering the exact sequence of events that followed. At some point over the 17 years since his amputation \u2013 between truck driving, part-time jobs and a lot of extreme sports \u2013 he invented a new kind of knee. The\u00a0Bartlett Tendon Universal Knee<\/a>, or\u00a0BTK<\/a>, has been featured in museums and called a \u201cpioneering development\u201d in prosthetic technology. But for Brian, all that mattered was whether he could get back on the slopes.<\/p>\nReference:<\/h4>\n
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