Twenty years ago, Laurie Stephens stood at the start gate in Torino, Italy, for her Paralympic debut. She was 21, born with spina bifida, had been racing on a monoski since she was 15. She won gold in downhill. Then gold in super-G. Then silver in giant slalom.

Last week she stood in Verona, Italy, carrying the U.S. flag into her sixth and final Paralympic Games. The same country where it started. The same country where it ended.

The Italy bookend isn't symbolic packaging. It's the shape her career took. She entered as a 21-year-old who had just won World Cup overall and giant slalom titles in her first professional season. She exited as a 42-year-old peer-elected flag bearer who told reporters she wanted to ski "loose and free and not be so hung up on how I finish."

She got exactly that.

The Full Medal Record, Start to Finish

Stephens competed at six Winter Paralympic Games across twenty years. Torino 2006, Vancouver 2010, Sochi 2014, PyeongChang 2018, Beijing 2022, and Milano Cortina 2026. Seven Paralympic medals total. Four Crystal Globes as World Cup overall champion in the women's sitting class. World championship gold in giant slalom in 2021. Two U.S. Paralympic swimming records in the 100-meter and 200-meter backstroke.

The downhill medal streak matters because downhill is the fastest event in para alpine skiing. Sitting athletes hit speeds over 80 mph on the steepest runs. Stephens medaled in downhill at four consecutive Games: gold in Torino 2006, silver in Vancouver 2010, bronze in Sochi 2014, and bronze again in PyeongChang 2018. She showed up at the same event four times and stood on the podium every time.

Beijing 2022 didn't produce a medal. She competed in multiple events. She kept showing up.

Milano Cortina 2026 was the close. She raced giant slalom on March 12. Anna-Lena Forster of Germany won. Stephens finished further back. The specifics don't matter because she had already said what the Games were for. Not medals. Experience.

From Loon Mountain to Six Paralympic Teams

Stephens was born with spina bifida and has used a wheelchair her entire life. When she was 12, her parents sent her to a weekend ski clinic at Loon Mountain in New Hampshire, one of those introductory adaptive sports programs where kids with physical disabilities get their first time on snow.

She found a monoski there. A monoski looks like a chair mounted on a single ski, controlled with outrigger poles. It's the sitting equivalent of the two-ski setup everyone else uses.

By 15, she had joined Chris Devlin-Young's New England Adaptive Ski Team. By 20, she was the overall and giant slalom World Cup champion in her first professional season. By 21, she was standing on a Paralympic podium in Italy with two gold medals.

The clinic-to-podium pipeline is real. It started with her parents signing her up for a weekend program when she was 12.

The Only Para Alpine Skier to Medal in Downhill at Four Consecutive Games

The streak across four Games in the same event is the record that defines her competitive career. Downhill requires speed tolerance, technical precision, and nerve. Most athletes peak in it once, maybe twice. Stephens did it four times in a row across eight years.

After PyeongChang 2018, she kept racing. Beijing 2022 was her fifth Games. No medals, but she competed. Milano Cortina 2026 was her sixth. She walked into the opening ceremony as one of two flag bearers, chosen by her teammates through the Team USA Athletes' Commission vote. The honor isn't appointed. Athletes vote for it themselves. When the people who know what it takes chose Laurie Stephens, they chose a teammate who had been doing this longer than most of them had been competing.

What Happens Next

Stephens plans to coach. She has said publicly that she wants to work with the next generation of para alpine athletes the way her own mentor, Chris Devlin-Young, worked with her when she was a teenager on a New Hampshire slope.

That transition from competitor to coach is the natural close for someone who spent two decades at the top of her sport, and the knowledge she carries doesn't retire with her.

For parents of kids with spina bifida or other physical disabilities who are watching this career close and wondering what adaptive sports can offer their own child, the answer is visible in the arc. Stephens didn't just medal and retire. She built a two-decade career that included world championships, World Cup titles, six Paralympic teams, peer respect significant enough to earn a flag bearer vote, and a post-competition role passing on what she learned.

That path starts the same way hers did: a weekend clinic. Adaptive skiing programs exist at resorts across the country, including through the National Sports Center for the Disabled, Disabled Sports USA, and programs affiliated with the U.S. Adaptive Alpine Ski Team pipeline. Most start younger than families expect. None of them require elite ability to walk through the door.

The Italy Full Circle

Stephens entered her Paralympic career in Italy at 21 with two golds and a silver. She closed it in Italy at 42 as flag bearer, competitor, and soon-to-be coach.

The symmetry isn't literary. It's geographic. The same country twice, twenty years apart, at opposite ends of a career. The first time, the world met her as a young athlete with spina bifida who had just won downhill and super-G. The second time, her teammates chose her to lead them into the arena.

The evolution from competitor to leader to mentor, with the whole thing framed by Italy at both ends.