Carving a Path Forward: Team USA Skier Spencer Wood’s Scary Fall and Rebound at UF Health

Spencer Wood skied down the mountain at 70 miles an hour in Valle Nevado, Chile. The familiar sound of his skis slicing through the snow filled his ears.

Then, total silence. The two-time Team USA Paralympian was airborne, but not as he planned.

He’d been late for a turn at a gate, sending him off path. He had too much air. He did two somersaults, known as a double tomahawk. Then three cartwheels. Then he crashed on his head in the snow.

“I wish we got video,” said Spencer, shaking his head with disappointment. “We didn’t. Kind of a bummer.”

Later that day, his neck stiffened, with minimal range of motion. Fortunately for the 28-year-old, both his skis ejected from his feet before he landed, or his knees and legs could have been severely injured.

But Spencer couldn’t shake off the wipeout entirely.

A week later, while with his team at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado, he told a physician assistant he had lingering symptoms, including memory loss. The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Medical Network coordinator arranged a flight for him to visit University of Florida Health, a National Medical Center for Team USA athletes. UF Health experts evaluated him for a concussion or other neurologic injuries.

“They were super swift, getting everything booked quickly,” Spencer said. “I flew in around 3 p.m., and by 5 p.m., I was on the table getting an MRI. I spent the whole next day in testing. I’m super grateful that the whole process is so well-established and built out. I felt like a king at UF Health. They took great care of me and were super professional.”

Spencer’s concussion evaluation felt like a slalom course — weaving from one specialist to the next, each appointment a checkpoint, like brushing a gate on a run. He saw several teams of professionals under one roof, all in the same place and on the same day.

“Spencer had a number of symptoms we were able to assess,” said Michael Jaffee, chair of the UF Department of Neurology and the director of the UF BRAIN Center. “He had advanced evaluations from neurology. Neuropsychology looked at the cognition. Physical therapy looked at the vestibular function with advanced diagnostic testing. And occupational therapy looked at some advanced ocular motor functioning.”

It was confirmed that Spencer sustained a concussion. Still, unlike that overcast day in Chile when snow kept visibility at a minimum, Spencer’s path had always been crystal clear. A man who’d spent his life carving clean lines around mountain-sized obstacles wasn’t about to be knocked off his line now — not when the snow was waiting.

The cerebral palsy he was born with couldn’t do it. Neither would the crash.

Spencer’s cerebral palsy affects his entire body, but the stroke he experienced in utero resulted in paralysis of the right side of his body, a condition known as hemiplegia. This causes limited mobility of his right ankle, a drop foot and some spasticity in his right hand.

It would have been hard to tell that Spencer suffered from the condition in his younger years. Born and raised in Pittsfield, Vermont — a small town of about 500 people — he was already skiing the surrounding Green Mountains by himself when he was 5 years old. Sometimes he whizzed by unannounced.

“My dad was teaching a ski lesson one time. He had these kids with him, and then all of a sudden he just got buzzed,” Spencer recalled. “Right down the hill, here’s this kid just singing along, not a care in the world, and he goes, ‘Holy cow! That was my son!’”

Spencer also participated in other sports — such as soccer, lacrosse and swimming — but as he got older, he began noticing a gap in his athletic ability compared with others. He didn’t even know he had cerebral palsy until one day when he was playing baseball at 10 years old.

“I was pitching, and no matter how much I tried to get the ball in the strike zone, I couldn’t get it. I kept hitting the batter over and over again,” Spencer said. “I felt so defeated. I remember coming home one night, and my dad was in the kitchen with me. He was like, ‘Look, things are different. Doesn’t mean you’re different. This isn’t the end of your life, and we’ve got to live with it.’ I remember being so broken and so sad.”

However, Spencer had already spent his young life mastering something that put him on a level playing field with his competition. On the diamond, he felt different. On the slopes, he felt special.

“The snow is an equalizer,” he said. “It allows any person with any disability, cognitive or physical, just to be one with nature and be at peace with themselves and what they bring to the table. It gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.”

It’s the only place Spencer feels comfortable, and his career trajectory shows it.

After years of honing his skills at a ski academy, Spencer participated in an entry-level event for para sports when he was a junior in high school. Six months after beginning competitive para alpine skiing, he made his World Cup debut in Aspen, Colorado. Over the next two years, Spencer joined Team USA and traveled to PyeongChang, North Korea, to compete in his first Paralympic Winter Games in 2018.

This March, friends and family will watch Spencer compete on the world stage again, this time in Milano Cortina, Italy. With his scary accident from 2023 and his visit to UF Health still in mind, he’s become a lot more aware of how to protect his head, especially when it comes to the signs of concussion he needs to look for after wipeouts.

“When Spencer’s competing, there’s always a little bit of nervousness, mostly around him becoming injured,” said Rachel Frisch, his fiancée. “But I just get so excited for him to go out and do what he loves to do every single day.”

And he’ll get a chance to do that in Milano Cortina from March 6-15. But while Italy may offer gold, it has always been the white snow — a blank canvas beneath his skis — where Spencer learned to carve out his place in life.

“Being a Paralympian has allowed me to see this world in a completely different light. It sheds more focus on the people who may be undervalued in society,” Spencer said. “It shows the world we have what it takes to be the best.”

Explore more inspiring patient stories and experience Human Progress Has No Finish Line campaign commercials at HumanProgress.UFHealth.org.