Go for the Gold

Diana Golden was 12 years old when she found out she had cancer. She was walking home one day after playing in the snow when her right leg simply gave out. Doctors diagnosed the problem as bone cancer. They recommended removing her leg above the knee.

When Diana heard the news, she asked the first question that came into her mind: "Will I still be able to ski?"

"When the doctors said yes," she later recalled, "I figured it wouldn't be too bad."

That attitude was characteristic of Diana's outlook on life. Losing a leg would cause most children to lose confidence and hope, but Diana refused to dwell on the negative. "Losing a leg?" she'd say. "It's nothing. A body part."

Most of all, Diana didn't want to let cancer stop her from doing what she loved. And what she loved was skiing. Diana had been on skis since the age of five. Her home in Lincoln, Massachusetts, was just a couple of hours from New Hampshire's Cannon Mountain. After the operation, Diana worked hard to get back to the mountain. "I always skied, and I intended to keep on skiing. There was never any question in my mind about that," she declared. Seven months after losing her leg, Diana met her goal. She was back out on the slopes.

Skiing wasn't quite the same with just one leg, but Diana made the best of it. She learned to go faster on one leg than most people could go on two. In high school, Diana became a member of her school's ski racing team. And in 1979, when she was just 17, she became a member of the U.S. Disabled Ski Team.

After high school, Diana Golden went on to Dartmouth College. There she saw how top two-legged skiers trained. Determined not to be left behind, Diana began training with the Dartmouth team. When they ran around the track, she followed them on crutches. When they ran up and down the steps of the football stadium, she went up and down the steps too—by hopping. "I had to adapt," she later explained. "I was an athlete. I had one leg, which meant I had to do it differently."

In 1982, Diana entered her first international ski race. She went to the World Handicapped Championships in Norway, where she won the downhill competition. In 1986, Diana won the Beck Award, which is given to the best American racer in international skiing. The next year, she placed 10th in a race against some of the best nondisabled skiers in the country. And in 1988, she was named Ski Racing magazine's U.S. Female Skier of the Year.

As a result of her courage and determination, Diana has changed the way the world looks at disabled athletes. People have begun to see them as strong and competent. "Everyone has some kind of 'disability'," Diana says. "It's what we do with our abilities that matters."

In 1990, Diana retired from racing for good.