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 doctors went through the 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 what he called a farewell tour. Skydiving, music festivals, scuba diving, the beach. A going-away trip for a limb.

Twelve years later, he raced at his first Paralympic Games in Cortina d'Ampezzo with his daughter Jameson's handprints on his competition helmet. The tattoo was his way of marking what was about to be gone. The handprints were his daughter's way of being in Cortina with him.

The Years Between Surgery and Milan

The surgery went as planned. What followed did not. Post-amputation nerve pain and phantom limb pain kept Pleban off his prosthetic for more than a year. He eventually connected with a specialist at Northwestern University and underwent targeted muscle reinnervation surgery, a procedure built for exactly that kind of chronic pain.

When he finally got back on snow, his first adaptive competition was, in his words, humbling. He got his butt kicked. He kept going. He worked his way through the U.S. pipeline, built a record on the World Cup circuit, and earned a spot on the national team.

He came close to qualifying for the 2022 Beijing Games. While his teammates raced in China, his wife went into labor at home. Jameson was born while the first Para snowboard events ran in Beijing. Pleban has said he couldn't have imagined being anywhere else.

Getting to Cortina

The 2025-26 season put him in Milan. A second-place finish in Steamboat Springs secured his spot on the team. When he crossed the line, his wife and mother were in tears. He said he worked so long and it came down to fractions of a second.

Pleban competes in para snowboard, a sport that made its Paralympic debut at Sochi 2014, the same year he chose amputation. He raced in both banked slalom and snowboard cross at the Cortina venues, the two events he had spent years preparing for.

He placed Jameson's handprints on his helmet before competing. A different gesture than the tattoo, but a parallel one: marking something permanent before it happened.

The Equipment No One Sees

The competition prosthetic Pleban races on can cost tens of thousands of dollars. It is built for the speed and impact forces of competitive snowboarding and has nothing in common with the prosthetic he walks on day to day. Insurance typically classifies it as non-essential and does not cover it.

Organizations like the Challenged Athletes Foundation exist to close that gap. More than half of Team USA's 2026 Paralympic athletes received CAF support for equipment, training, or competition. Families can apply for those grants directly, and the program covers both competition equipment and participation costs for athletes at every level.

What He Wants to Make Shorter

Pleban has talked openly about how hard it was to find other amputees in snowboarding when he started out. Adaptive programs existed but were not visible. Getting from a fresh amputation to a national team program required years of searching that he would prefer the next person not need to repeat.

He made it to his first Games at 32. The path behind him is real. Families navigating limb difference with children in winter sports can find adaptive sports programs and equipment funding that are considerably more visible now than when Pleban was looking.

Jameson's handprints made the start gate in Cortina.