At the sixth annual Livewire Classic at Northstar at Tahoe I won in the able body sport division, and was the 19th fastest racer out of 162 riders on the mountain. Super stoked to have put down a fast run on my first race of the season! Only the pros and 4 of the experts had faster times today.

Evan wall rides to fakie.
This tour was sponsored by Adaptive Action Sports, with support from:
Balance
Thrasher Mag
NHS

JULIE JAG
Sentinel Staff Writer
While careening down a hill on his mountain bike during a race in Toro Park last week, Evan Strong didn't just lose his footing. He lost his entire lower leg.

Evan Strong lost his leg in a motorcycle accieent more than two years ago, but that hasn't kept him from skateboarding or mountain biking. Strong is competing in the CCCX downhill mountain biking series, the Amped Rider 8 Legs Skate Tour and the Extremity Games. (Bill Lovejoy/Sentinel)

Strong, 19, of Capitola, rides with a prosthetic limb attached to his left thigh. He was competing in one of the races in the local CCCX downhill series -- the third downhill race of his career -- when the earth beneath the trail crumbled. He lost his balance and went tumbling down the hillside and into a brook. During the commotion, his prosthetic limb came unhooked.

Unfazed, Strong snapped his metal leg back into place and charged back up the hill toward the finish. He crossed it just 21 seconds behind the able-bodied winner of his division.

It seems nothing can keep Evan Strong down.

Perseverance has always been a cornerstone of Strong's personality. But never has he tested the trait more than in the two years since an SUV slammed into his motorcycle, costing him his leg and nearly his life.

"It's just one of those things you have to adapt to and evolve to do the things you want to do," Strong said.

Strong was speaking of the race, in which he also had a 102-degree fever and the beginnings of the flu. But he may just as well have been summing up his stance on life in general.

Strong once was an up-and-coming skateboarder, obsessed with his sport and on the cusp of making it as a professional athlete. He planned to move from his home in Hawaii to either Santa Cruz or San Diego to pursue such a career when he turned 18. A few days before his November birthday, however, his plans changed drastically when an intoxicated driver failed to turn with the road, steering straight into the Yamaha cruiser motorcycle Strong was riding.

The doctors said Strong survived only because he was able to keep his heart rate down and himself calm.

Of course, it helped that -- days before it happened -- Strong knew the accident was coming.

A premonition

Strong's sister was in tears. His mother wore a look of concern.

He had joined them both for lunch a few weeks before his 18th birthday because he had something important to ask them. He had a feeling, a premonition really, that something life-altering would happen to him soon. He wanted to get their word that whatever happened, his family would be OK.

Of course they would, his mother said.

Two weeks later, at 9:30 on a weekday morning, Strong was slamming into the hood of a Toyota 4Runner.

The full-face helmet Strong wore saved his head and his life, but the rest of his body was a mess. When he came to rest on the pavement, his mangled left leg was resting across his right shoulder. The blood dripping from the limb, he noticed, was keeping him warm. He tried to get out his cell phone to call for help, but his left arm was shattered and wouldn't move and he couldn't reach across with his right.

"My shin and muscles were just shredded," he said.

Instead of panicking, Strong closed his eyes. Then he began to meditate -- something his parents had taught him as a child.

"He knew everything was going to be fine," said longtime friend Soleil Brown, who spent months at Strong's bedside during his recovery. "He was lying by the guardrail and thinking, 'I'm going to be fine. This is a good thing. This is going to be a good thing for me.'"

After an ambulance ride to the hospital in Maui, Strong was medivacked to a better equipped hospital in Oahu. During transit, Strong said, he lost much of his blood and didn't produce a pulse three times. Three days later, he lost his leg.

The decision to amputate was Strong's alone. While his friends and family watched his toes grow black, none wanted him to sacrifice the limb. But the leg was useless, and Strong knew it. What he worried about was the gangrene creeping into his knee -- the one joint he knew he would need if he was ever to skate again. And at the time, getting back to skating was the only thing that mattered.

"I had a breakdown of such sadness because I couldn't go out on a skateboard," he said. "I don't think anyone goes through something that hard without feeling sadness or grief. I just knew what I needed to do."

Even with the amputation, saving Strong's knee was a tenuous process. His leg was in such bad shape that the large quadriceps muscle above the knee had to be removed -- leaving him with a permanent divot down his thigh. The main artery had also been severed, and for months the blood pooling around his leg would make the simple task of standing excruciating.

Against his doctor's orders, Strong broke out his skateboard as soon as he advanced to using crutches to get around. He would stand with one foot on it and push off the ground with his crutches.

A year and a half after his amputation, Strong finally was fitted with a prosthetic. Made of steel, it had a carbon fiber cup for his knee, a spring at the bottom to absorb shock and a flexible "foot." Strong couldn't wait to get it, and his skateboard, out to the local park.

But the experience was bittersweet. Strong had fought his way back onto his skateboard, but no matter how many hours he spent on it, he realized he would never regain the touch that had helped him become one of Hawaii's best young talents.

"Whereas he was right back on the skateboard and still such a beautiful, powerful skater, his ability to defy the laws of physics with tricks and things" wasn't there, Strong's mother, Lisa, said. "His inability to get that back without an ankle is frustrating."

Still, Strong faced that challenge with a maturity greater than his 19 years. He kept skating, moved to Santa Cruz and started attending Cabrillo College, and kept his eyes open for another opportunity.

Once again, his faith and perseverance paid off.

On tour

As a teen, Strong envisioned spending his late teen years touring the country with a major sponsor. He never would have guessed that sponsor would be Adaptive Action Sports, an organization dedicated to giving people with disabilities access to action sports.

As part of its Amped Rider 8 Legs Skate Tour, which starts Saturday and runs till July 24, Strong and other disabled athletes will be giving skating demonstrations in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City and Washington, D.C. In between, Strong will fit in a trip to Orlando, Fla., on July 19-21 for the Extremity Games -- an X-Games for disabled athletes. There he will be entered in his first skateboarding competition since his accident.

Many athletes might see a big difference between those events and typical professional skate tours, but not Strong.

"It was always my dream to go on tour with a skate company and do demos," he said, "so I'm living my dream."

Even better, Strong now has new dreams thanks to his discovery of downhill mountain bike racing.

Strong started mountain biking as a way to stay in shape. With the upper part of his thigh missing, he struggled to keep pace with friends on the uphills. He always caught them on the downhills, however, where he charged fearlessly.

It quickly replaced skateboarding as his passion.

"He liked skating, but it was kind of depressing for him to go from a really high caliber of skating to being able to skate good but not nearly as good as before the accident," said longtime friend Soleil Brown, who spent months at Strong's bedside during his recovery. "Mountain biking was a new sport, not something he did at all before. He started his joy from zero. He's as good as he could possibly be right now. With skating, he was always thinking back to the way he was before the accident."

After his skateboarding tours, Strong has trips planned to the mountain biking havens of Northern California, Oregon and Whistler, B.C., Canada. He also plans on competing in several other mountain biking races, including a series held at Northstar resort in Tahoe. In the seven-race CCCX series, Strong was one of the top riders -- disabled or not -- to compete in three or fewer races.

And above the adrenaline, speed and danger, hanging with the best is what appeals to Strong about mountain biking. He's being recognized for his skill as much as his missing limb. And after all he's been through, that makes him proud.

"It proves I'm a stronger individual than I give myself credit for. I saw what I was made of, and I love my life," he said. "It's definitely been a lot of work to get where I am, and definitely a lot of things are different. ... But I can do everything I want to do and more, too.

"I don't feel I'm disabled in any sense of the word, or limited. I think disability is a state of mind. I don't wear it that I'm an amputee or that I am a broken person.

"I am me, and I am whole."

Contact Julie Jag at jjag@santacruzsentinel.com.