Joe Pleban was 21 when his ankle stopped working. The diagnosis was pigmented villonodular synovitis, a rare joint disease that fills a joint with tumors and erodes cartilage from the inside. His surgeons went through their options. Nothing had worked. The choices were joint fusion, which meant no more competitive athletics, or amputation.

He chose amputation.

Before the surgery in June 2014, he had a tattoo placed on his left ankle: "Please cut here." Then he and his fiancée took his foot on a farewell run through everything he loved: skydiving, music festivals, scuba diving, paint balling, the beach. A bucket list for his left foot. It is the kind of gesture that, when you hear it, tells you exactly who someone is.

The Recovery That Wasn't

The surgery went as planned. What followed did not. Post-amputation nerve pain and phantom limb pain left Pleban unable to use his prosthetic for more than a year after the operation. The active life he had imagined stayed out of reach until he connected with a specialist at Northwestern University and underwent targeted muscle reinnervation (TMR) surgery, a procedure designed specifically for that kind of chronic post-amputation pain.

When he finally got back on snow, the first adaptive competition was, in his own words, a humbling experience. He got his butt kicked. He kept going. He spent winters in Colorado, trained full time, worked his way onto the U.S. national team, and started posting results on the World Cup circuit. The path from "I can't use my prosthetic" to "I'm on the national team" took years, and it required a level of stubbornness that comes through in how Pleban talks about all of it.

Missing Beijing

He came close to qualifying for the 2022 Beijing Winter Paralympics. While his teammates were racing in China, his wife went into labor at home. He was there for it. He said he couldn't have imagined being anywhere else, and you believe him. His daughter Jameson was born while the first Para snowboard events were running in Beijing, and he was up in the middle of the night cheering for both his wife and his team. His daughter's handprints are on his competition helmet now.

Qualifying for Milan

This past season, a second-place finish in Steamboat Springs secured his spot on the team.

"I just came across the line and looked at my time, knowing I was guaranteed a second place and a podium. My wife and my mom were in tears... You work so long and it comes down to fractions of a second."

Pleban competes in Para snowboard, a sport that made its Paralympic debut at the 2014 Sochi Games. He will race in banked slalom and snowboard cross at the Cortina venues beginning March 6.

The Equipment Gap

This is a part of adaptive sports that rarely gets explained: Para snowboarders competing at this level need two completely different prosthetics. The one Pleban walks on day to day is built for mobility and durability. The one he races in has a high-performance shock absorption system and custom components engineered specifically for speed and impact forces. Those two prosthetics serve entirely different functions, and the competition version can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Insurance treats it as a non-essential and typically does not cover it.

This is exactly the gap that organizations like the Challenged Athletes Foundation exist to fill. CAF has supported more than half of Team USA's 2026 Paralympic athletes with grants for equipment, training, and competition. The opportunity to compete is only real if the equipment is reachable, and for many athletes, CAF is what closes that distance.

What He's Carrying Into Italy

Pleban has talked openly about how hard it was to find other amputees in snowboarding when he was starting out. Adaptive programs existed, but they weren't visible. Part of what drives him now, alongside the racing, is making those pathways easier to find for people earlier in that process. He had to search. He wants that search to be shorter for the next person.

He qualified. His equipment is dialed. His daughter's handprints are on his helmet.

March 6, the Games begin.