Sporting Witness
Sporting Witness
The Queen of Paralympic Snowboarding
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February 26, 2022
9 minutes
Available for over a year
Bibian Mentel-Spee became a national hero in the Netherlands after campaigning for snowboarding to become part of the Winter Paralympics and then winning Gold the first time the event was held, at Sochi in 2014. Mentel-Spee had switched to Paralympic sport after cancer forced her to have a leg amputated. She would win two more gold snowboarding medals at the next games in Pyeongchang in 2018, just weeks after another gruelling round of cancer treatment. Mentel-Spee died in 2021. Matthew Kenyon speaks to her husband, Edwin Spee, and to Canadian Paralympic snowboarder, Michelle Salt.
PHOTO: Bibian Mentel-Spee in action in 2014 (Getty Images)