by Van Tieu
After being shot in the back and losing his leg at the age of 15, Ralph “Putt” Green, a star quarterback, yearned for another sport to love. He searched for years and then found it in the snow.
It was in the Poconos, far from his home at the Roosevelt Projects in Bedford Stuyvesant, that Green discovered he could ski.
“When I am skiing down those hills,” he said, “I feel alive.”
The 2010 Winter Paralympics will be held in Vancouver in mid-March and Green, who is now 32, will be competing in the super-combined, the super-g, the slalom, and the giant slalom. He expects to finish strong in the slalom race, where he currently ranks third in the nation.
“If I walk away with a medal, that’s awesome,” he said, “I’ll tell you what I’m not going to do, walk away with my head down.”
With just one leg, Green can out perform able-bodied skiers. He can speed down hills up to 83 miles per hour, and can legpress 780 pounds.
“I’ve been skiing most of my life, and I can’t keep up with him,” said Joe Rooney, chief marketing officer of Cox Communications and one of Green’s sponsors. “It’s amazing to see him ski, it’s like poetry- the way he glides down the hill.”
It has taken Green 10 years to come to this point in his life.
“The first two years, I was just falling down the hill,” he said, “I was really frustrated, but then I realized that you have to experience the downs before the ups.”
He now races professionally — “We train all year. We follow the snow.” The snow and training takes him all over the world, from Oregon, to Chile, to New Zealand.
But today Green returned to his alma mater, Boys and Girls High School, where he met a group of perhaps 80 children. He told them his story and encouraged them to stay in school and work hard. Green is also is a motivational speaker; his motto is “Don’t be afraid to be different.”
One young child, convinced that Green was a robot and asked, “Do you still have a real heart?”
“Let me tell you, little man,” he replied. “My heart is even realer than when I had two legs.”
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