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A celebrated Vernon Paralympian is hanging up his snowboard.
Curt Minard is retiring after several successful years on the slopes.
Minard entered the competitive snowboard scene in 2016 competing in the Upper Limb category in snowboardcross and banked slalom.
Minard lost his right arm in a workplace accident.
"In 2008, I was involved in a 14,400-volt electrical contact accident, me being the exit and the ground point I suffered life-threatening injuries and nearly died three times in the burn unit,” Minard told Castanet in 2018 before heading to his first Paralympic Winter Games in PyeongChang.
Minard found success in his 2016 debut race season with a gold medal at a pair of NorAm races in Big White Ski Resort.
He also won the Canadian National Championship title that same year.
Minard landed on the Canada Para NextGen Team the next year, defending his Canadian National Championship title, competing at his first of two IPC World Championship races and bolstering his resume with a World Cup bronze medal on the Olympic course in Pyeongchang in 2017.
He was nominated to the Canadian National Para Team where he represented Team Canada at the 2018 Paralympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang achieving two-top 10’s - 6th in snowboardcross and 8th in banked slalom.
"It took an army of family, friends, specialists, sponsors behind me over the years to shape the outcome and you all have a place in my heart #forevergrateful special thx to my wife who waxed my boards with love each race," Minard told Canada Snowboard. “It was a path that was never easy and my journey through sport shaped my character.”
“Curt has been an integral member of the para snowboard program for the past number of years and has helped shape the program to where it is today. I first met Curt in the winter of 2016 and it was easily seen even then his grit and determination to progress his snowboarding. Curt was a supportive teammate and fierce competitor - leaving everything he had on the track,” said Kim Krahulec, High Performance Manager for Speed Teams.
