In 2008, Mike Schultz was competing in a snowmobile race in the Arizona desert when a crash left him critically injured. His left leg was amputated above the knee. He was 28 years old.
Most of the things he loved — motocross, snowmobiling, snowboarding — demand enormous force through the lower body. The prosthetic he received from medical providers after the accident was well-built for walking. It was not built for what Schultz wanted to do.
*'It was clear early on that I was going to need something else,'* he said.
He had no formal engineering training. He had a problem. And he had, it turned out, an exceptional mind for solving it.
**Building Something That Didn't Exist**
Schultz spent months designing a prosthetic knee that could take the impact of extreme sports — something that could flex and absorb shocks in ways conventional prosthetics weren't designed to manage. Working in his garage, iterating on prototypes, he eventually produced the **Moto Knee** — a hydraulic prosthetic specifically engineered for high-impact action sports.
It worked.
He got back on his snowmobile. He got back on his snowboard. And then he did something remarkable: he started competing again.
At the **2018 PyeongChang Winter Paralympics**, Schultz won a gold medal and a silver medal in para snowboarding. At **Beijing 2022**, he won another silver. He is, by any measure, one of the most successful para-snowboarders in the history of the sport.
But the more significant story may be what he built off the snow.
**BioDapt: From Garage to Paralympic Village**
In 2010, Schultz founded **BioDapt Inc.**, a company dedicated to designing high-performance prosthetic components for amputee athletes. Where conventional prosthetic companies optimise for everyday use — walking, standing, sitting — BioDapt specialises in the extreme demands of sport: the lateral forces of snowboarding, the rotational torques of motocross, the repetitive compression of running.
The product line has expanded from the original Moto Knee to include the **Versa Foot**, a prosthetic foot component engineered for multi-sport performance. Both are now used by athletes across a range of para sports disciplines worldwide.
At the **Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Paralympics** — currently underway in northern Italy, running from March 6 to March 15 — **25 para-snowboard athletes** are competing on BioDapt prosthetics. The **entire US Paralympic snowboarding team** is on BioDapt equipment. Schultz is among them, competing in Snowboard Cross and Banked Slalom in what he has announced will be his final Paralympic Games.
After Milano Cortina, he plans to retire from competitive sport and devote his full attention to BioDapt and supporting the next generation of para athletes.
**A Partnership to Scale**
In the lead-up to the 2026 Games, BioDapt announced a partnership with **Autodesk**, an AI-powered manufacturing software company, to refine its prosthetic designs and expand production capacity. The collaboration is designed to accelerate both product improvement and the ability to serve a wider community of amputee athletes globally — not just at the elite level.
Schultz has been direct about his ambitions: he wants BioDapt components to be accessible to any amputee who wants to pursue an active life, not only the top-tier competitors who end up at the Paralympics.
**What He Actually Built**
When you trace the arc of this story, the numbers are almost secondary to what they represent.
A young man loses his leg and receives a prosthetic that can't keep up with who he is. No engineering background. A garage. A problem he refuses to accept. A company that now equips 25 athletes at one of the world's most prestigious sporting events.
He didn't wait for someone else to build what he needed. He built it himself — and then made sure others could have it too.
*'I just wanted to get back on my motocross bike and my snowmobile,'* he said once, of how it started. *'I realised I could have a much bigger impact.'*
In the mountains of northern Italy this week, 25 athletes are proving that he did. 🏔️🏅
*Sources: BioDapt Inc. · Team USA · US Ski and Snowboard · Forbes · Good Good Good · Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympic Games · Minnesota Public Radio News*
