Early in the para alpine competition at the 2026 Winter Paralympics, Arthur Bauchet went down in the super-G at Tofane. He crashed, tore a ligament in his wrist, and spent the afternoon in hospital. That night, staff at the Paralympic Village repair service built him a custom carbon brace for the injured hand. He promised the surgeon he'd come back with the gold medal. The next morning he skied the alpine combined and won it, his tenth Paralympic medal. "Ten is my favorite number," he said afterward, "so to do the tenth as a gold, it's really crazy."

Racing a Body That Gets Harder to Use

Bauchet has hereditary spastic paraplegia, a progressive spinal condition that causes muscle stiffness and involuntary tremors in his legs. The first symptoms appeared when he was 10. By 15, they had gotten bad enough that he couldn't walk without significant support, and he dropped out of school to finish his studies through France's national distance-learning center, the CNED. Racing at the elite level depends on precise lower-limb control, which means adapting his technique as the disease progresses.

He started competing on one pill a day. Going into Cortina 2026, he was taking eight pills a day and receiving Botox injections in his legs once or twice a year. "My illness is progressive," he said before these Games, "so we have to adapt a little bit more each season."

The competition record doesn't make the disease visible. He has won eight consecutive Big Crystal Globe overall titles on the World Cup circuit, 12 World Championship gold medals including his first at age 16, and more than 100 World Cup victories. He's 25.

Four Silvers, Then the Golds

At PyeongChang 2018, Bauchet was 17 and won four silver medals across four events. The results earned him the nickname "King Arthur" in French sporting circles: the young Frenchman who was almost always fastest but not quite the gold medalist. Four years later at Beijing 2022, that changed. He won the downhill. He won the super combined. He left China with three golds and a bronze, the defending champion in two disciplines heading into Cortina.

The arc from PyeongChang to Beijing wasn't a breakthrough so much as a consolidation. The skiing had been fast enough for years. Learning to close at the moments that counted most took another Games.

Cortina: Downhill, Crash, Comeback

He arrived in Cortina as the favorite in all five disciplines. The downhill went close: silver behind Robin Cuche of Switzerland, his ninth career Paralympic medal.

The super-G ended on the snow. He crashed, tore a ligament in his wrist, and spent the afternoon and evening at the hospital while staff at the Paralympic Village repair service fabricated a carbon brace for the injured hand. He promised the medical team he'd come back with the gold.

The alpine combined runs on two consecutive portions: a downhill segment and a slalom segment completed the following day. Bauchet won it wearing the carbon brace, his tenth medal and third gold at the Games level. The surgeon got his update.

The giant slalom followed on March 13, the event that had been missing from his collection. He had won the World Championship giant slalom four times. He had never won the Paralympic title in the discipline. He won both runs wearing the same carbon brace, finishing as France's top individual performer at the Games: two golds and a silver across five races.

"King Arthur slays the curse," the headline read. Bauchet, who has always been more interested in Batman than King Arthur, has said the nickname is an honor he doesn't take too seriously.

What Adaptation Looks Like in Practice

His condition will keep progressing. The tools of adaptation have expanded over the past decade: eight pills where there was once one, Botox injections twice a year, and a carbon brace fabricated overnight at the Paralympic Village while he rests in a hospital room.

For families navigating children with progressive conditions, that list is recognizable in shape. The protocol gets longer, the season gets adjusted, and the question of whether sport still fits keeps coming up. It does, and for lower-limb conditions in particular, the para alpine skiing pathway is worth knowing about early: standing classification covers a wide range of functional profiles, and adaptive programs run at beginner levels well before competitive age becomes relevant. A guide to finding those programs is at How Families Find Para Alpine Skiing Programs for Children with Disabilities.

At 25, Bauchet is already into his ninth consecutive Crystal Globe season. He finished Cortina with two golds and one silver, 11 Paralympic medals in total, and the knowledge of exactly what his body needs to get through a race week.