Gardnerville man on way to Olympics

Gold medalist monoskier Peter Axelson said the first hint he had that he was going to be a U.S. delegate to the Olympics closing ceremony was when his secretary buzzed him.

"Somebody from the White House is on the phone for you."

Axelson is leaving Thursday to participate in Sunday's closing ceremony in Vancouver.

The call was from the executive office of the president, who was working out the delegate list to the closing ceremonies.

"I think my name was submitted by the disability sports world," he said. "The White House wanted more information because they wanted to make sure that I had the equivalent of a gold medal."

Axelson has seven gold medals, but they were for world championships, which were similar to the Paralympics.

After directing officials to a Wired Magazine article, they conducted the background checks.

"They gave me this date, and I was looking at my organizer and I thought I wrote the date down wrong. The Paralympics are in March and I wrote down Feb. 28," he said. "So I called back and they said, 'No you're going to the Olympics.' I've never gotten to go to the Olympics before."

Axelson said he will be in Vancouver for three days, where he will be attending events with fellow delegates.

"I don't know exactly what the delegation is going to be doing," he said. "They want us to go to events and receptions. We'll be doing whatever the leaders decide we're going to do."

Axelson is the founder of Minden company Beneficial Designs, which produces fitness and sports equipment for people with disabilities.

"A lot of fitness equipment has a lot of barriers to being used by disabled people," he said. "There are very few pieces of equipment you can use from a wheelchair."

Axelson is presenting on a panel at the Paralympics on making better fitness equipment for people with disabilities.

Axelson received a spinal injury when he took a 165-foot fall during his sophomore year at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

"My life redirected into a different kind of engineering," he said. "Instead of designing airplanes, I was designing adaptive equipment. I started trying to figure out how to do things I couldn't do."

Axelson started with the monoski.

"I figured out there were a lot of other people who wanted to do things that I was doing with adaptive equipment," he said. "I also figured out that I couldn't afford the product liability costs. That's when we made decision to release all the information into the public domain so nobody could patent them."

When Axelson competed in 1986, he had the only monoski with full shock absorber technology. By 1988, every monoski had that technology.

"When we design recreational equipment, we publish the information about it," he said.

In addition to his company, he's done a lot of work designing standards for making parks and other outdoor recreation sites more accessible.

"I've worked on accessibility standards for ski areas, amusement parks, play grounds, sidewalks and guide books for federal highways, trails and paths," he said.

He is also on the Nevada Recreation Trail Board and a member of that board's grant reviewing committee.

Axelson, who moved to Gardnerville in the fall of 2000, said he wished wife Denise could come.

"But when you're part of an official delegation it's quite an honor," he said.

Sharing that honor will be Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Jacobson, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, five-time Olympic gold medalist speed skater Bonnie Blair, 2002 sled hockey Paralympic gold medalist Manuel "Manny" Guerra and 1992 Olympic gold medalist figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi.

The closing ceremony will air 7 p.m. on NBC.