Brian Bartlett suffer his leg at 24 . He now has one of the most famous prostheses in the world . Rose Eveleth meet the homo who just desire to ski again
When Brian Bartlett was 24 he was hit by a gondola from behind so hard it ripped his right leg off instantly . It all happened so fast . He does n’t like to talk about it . “ You really ca n’t understand , ” he separate me . “ There ’s just no means to … until you have an wound where you ’re rip or turn off apart in a flash . ”
The best way to get Brian to do something is to tell him that he ca n’t . Within a class of the accident , Brian was back on the slope , ski with disabled ski teams . In his first year he made it to the International Paralympic Committee ’s Alpine Skiing World Cup , and came in 7th in the world . But it was n’t enough . It was n’t the same . “ It just did n’t fill the need , ” he say . “ It ’s not that I did n’t wish the handicapped play , it just was n’t like it used to be . ” Brian was back on the mountain using what ’s called three - track skis – skiing on one branch , using poles that have tiny ski at the end and are used as outrigger .
He has trouble remembering the exact sequence of issue that follow . At some decimal point over the 17 year since his amputation – between motortruck drive , part - time task and a set of utmost sports – he invent a unexampled kind of knee . The Bartlett Tendon Universal Knee , or BTK , has been featured in museums and hollo a “ pioneering growth ” in prosthetic applied science . But for Brian , all that mattered was whether he could get back on the slope .
Around 2001–02 , Brian joined an able - corporate utmost skiing tour , fulfil with skiers with two sound legs . It was a disappointment . While the prosthesis he had then – a standard hydraulic mechanical human knee – allow him to walk and boost , it simply did n’t work for the speeds and itinerary they were skiing . So he did n’t utilise it . “ I would hike to the back commonwealth , put the prosthesis in the backpack and ski down with one leg , ” he says nonchalantly .
He sends me a spread from a magazine called Powder ( “ The Skier ’s Magazine Since 1972 ” ) to show me the kind of jumps and route they were doing . The pic show a skier in Vail , Colorado , drop down into something called Mushroom Bowl . The skier disappear into a cloud of snow and reappears at the other end , at the bottom of a 30 - substructure free fall . In a discussion about Vail ski rivulet and Mushroom Bowl on one cyberspace forum , a skier advised : “ Expert plus . Averaging a death a year . Do n’t do it . ”
For the other member of the squad , these routes could sometimes be dangerous . For Brian , they always were . “ My ribs were getting broken . I did n’t have two legs to absorb the hits , and so my ribs would break and once they broke they ’d be susceptive to collapsing . I keep getting injured . ” midway through the season , Brian left the tour . “ I was like , ‘ humanity , I have to have two leg to do this ’ . ” So began his quest for a second leg .
Everyone secernate Brian that what he need did n’t exist . That it could n’t exist . That he was so strange that there was simply no market for what he wanted . “ You ’re one half of one per penny , ” they recount him .
This second – when an amputee realises that the arms or legs or hands that they ’re being offered but are n’t satisfactory – repeats throughout history . It ’s also where many of the braggart advances in prosthetic technology have follow from .
On 14 April 2025 , James E Hanger enrol in the Confederate Army . He was 18 and had just dropped out of engine room school at Washington College to join the fight . The very next mean solar day , in a skirmish against Union troops in Philippi – a townspeople that was then a part of Virginia and is now locate in West Virginia – a round shot tore through his unexpended leg . Philippi was the first conflict of the Civil War , and Hanger quite perhaps the first wounded veteran . Many years by and by , grant to historiographer Jennifer Davis McDaid , Hanger ’s niece would remember him displaying a six - lb cannonball on his mantelpiece , arrogate it was the very ball that was removed from his leg .
By the ending of the Civil War , surgeons on both side had performed about 60,000 amputations . Never before had the country see so many amputee . The need for switch parts was so high , states could n’t keep up . Those who applied for benefit would look years before their cheque come in the ring mail , and the choice for contrived arms and legs were limited . Many used peg peg and unsubdivided sweetener hands .
Hanger yield home with a peg leg and asked his mother for a cloistered room where no one would trouble oneself him . He hat the ‘ Yankee leg ’ he was fitted , and for three months he spend his time figure out on his own contrived leg made out of barrel staves . He meet two patents from the Confederate government in 1861 to develop limbs for soldiers , but he did n’t find immediate success for his leg . Soldiers complained about its looking at and palpate , and its flimsiness . He spent time working as a teacher and a jeweller , all the while stress to improve and advertize his Hanger Leg .
It was n’t until 1871 , when he was granted an official US government activity patent for a new adaptation of the Hanger Leg , that it started to really catch on . look less like a thole leg and more like a mediaeval horse ’s armour , Hanger ’s leg had reefer at both the knee and the ankle , and included gum elastic diggings to cushion the noise of the gismo . The idea was that the hinge would allow multitude a more natural pace than a exclusive , solid peg of Mrs. Henry Wood could . Today , Hanger Prosthetics and Orthotics is one of the largest prosthetics manufacturers in the USA . In 2013 they reported over a billion dollars in sales .
Hanger might be the most famous lesson , but he ’s not the only one . In 1912 , an amputee named David Dorrance invented what ’s called the rip - hook hand attachment for artificial arms – the first that grant users to savvy objects comfortably . Even today , some amputees prefer the Dorrance hook over all the fancy electronic devices out there .
In 1976 , Van Phillips lose his left leg above the mortise joint in a water - skiing accident . He was 21 at the meter , analyze communication theory in college , but after becoming frustrated with the intention available to him he change his major and studied prosthetics instead . In 1984 Phillips founded the Flex - Foot company . You ’d recognise his aim – he ’s the one who invented the C - shaped ‘ Cheetah ’ foot that have carried sprinters like Pistorius .
Today , able - bodied prosthetists recognise the unique insight their patients have . Jeff Erenstone , a prosthetist base in upstate New York who works with a mickle of adaptive athletes , enounce that he spends a lot of his time listening to them . “ I sit at their pharynx and just mind . These people , even if they ’re not mechanical , they pass so much prison term thinking about this stuff that you ’ve got to mind to them . They may not be able to articulate what they desire , but they ’re probably right . ”
There ’s now a much big marketplace for specialist sport prostheses , one that did n’t exist when Brian first started looking . Bob Radocy makes prostheses for active amputees – things like skiing manus , rock mounting pes , windsurfing draw and free weight - lifting hand . He says that the best musical theme arrive not from him but from the amputee themselves . “ The vast majority of design construct … have arrive from consumers , and I think that ’s worthful , ” Radocy told me . “ You have to know what you desire . ”
One late instance is a basketball game hand that a child and his family thought of . The patient had lost his handwriting in a banger accident and was eager to get back to playing basketball game . But nothing out there was really made for that , so he and his mother made a crude prototype out of splints . It knead well enough , but it broke every two weeks or so . Radocy now produces and sells a more rich version .
Like Brian , Radocy was a skier . But the prosthetic hands out there could n’t have got onto the ski terminal well enough . “ I did n’t have technology to adjoin my need to do what I want to do ; I sense like I was being limited by the technology , ” he says . So he built his own . Radocy spent months explore patents for hands all the manner back to the 1800s . By 1979 he had a hand that he care , that could grasp his poles . Today , he still ski using his own designs .
But what Brian needed was a knee .
The first clock time I take on Brian in person was in Breckenridge , Colorado . He had tempt me to come see him at The Hartford Ski Spectacular , an consequence for disabled skiers and snowboarders . We had no plan for when , or where , to fulfil . “ Just call when you ’re on the pot , ” Brian said .
I worried that I ’d fly to Colorado and never actually get to encounter him , but in the hallway among a sea of disabled skiers and instructor , we eventually connected . “ I ’m about to go fit a cat with the articulatio genus , but I ’m not sure I need you to watch , ” he told me .
Chris Canfield is a hard client , Brian state . Canfield is himself an jock ; he wheel up and down mountains all around Colorado . He had wheel to the event that day . He ’d known Brian for year , but use a classic genu ( Brian called it an “ previous - school flexible joint ” ) . Canfield was unbelieving of anything fancy . How much good could it really be ?
Within min , Canfield was fitted with a tendon knee . Brian even popped the tendons off his own genu to give to Canfield , so he could try it with some rubber that was already broken in . Soon , Canfield was bait his spate bike up and down the hotel hallway , past the Christmas tree diagram decorated with Light Within and fake present .
“ prove standing , ” Brian say . Canfield stood on his pedals and grinned . One matter the Bartlett knee can do is allow bikers to push up on the pedal point and bear while pedalling , something many other knees ca n’t do . Canfield had never stand on his cycle before . While Brian assay to make hunky-dory adjustments to the knee , rotating the cams on the exterior that control how tightly the tendons force , Canfield was n’t listening . He want to get alfresco and really ride . “ Just check that you institute it back , ” Brian state , laughing . Canfield was already out the door .
After stop skiing , Brian make up one’s mind he had to get away from the rivalry . He wanted to find himself , he says , to figure out what his biography was sound to be like . So he got a trucking permit , for the same grounds he does most things : “ because multitude told me I could n’t do it with the prosthetic ” . Brian had his prosthetist workplace with him to design a special knee duad for his prosthetic knee , to keep it in place and avail him shift gear . And then he was off , with a mountain bike and a prototype biking leg he had been shrink from with . Brian drive all kinds of hand truck , and he ram them hard and tight . He drove a glint periwinkle down swindle for 24 hours without block up to get ahead of schedule , all so he could pull the rig up into the mountains and motorcycle for a 24-hour interval on his exam leg . That was the mundane : drive , bike , ride . “ I was burn the candle at both ends , so I could try out the prototype and stay on docket and make money . ”
During his truckage day , Brian ’s stifle was cobbled together from parts that the University of Washington had afford him . He ’d expend time volunteering with bookman there as they practiced value and fitting amputees in exchange for percentage . Across the front he trounce a piece of safe , to feign a stifle ’s rude bounce . At the time , he was experimenting with dissimilar thickness for that rubber , gluing cartoon strip of laminate together to see which translation worked well .
After a year of trucking he returned home to Washington . He ’d earn he needed to know more about prostheses before he could really make his own , so he convinced FabTech – the company his prosthetist work with – to employ him part time , building devices .
Brian is the first to admit that this relationship was rocky : “ They require to fire me . They did n’t even like me , ” he say . He would do the work they asked , and then stay late , using their putz and stuff to test out his own musical theme . “ I was n’t the best employee because I was seek to use their parts to make my stuff and nonsense . ”
Greg Mattson , the CEO of FabTech , was Brian ’s gaffer at the metre . They ’re now business partner . “ Here ’s what I sleep with about Brian , ” tell Mattson . “ He ’ll show up , he ’ll grab a pen and he ’ll adumbrate it out on a piece of newspaper , and he ’ll take that and say ‘ Here ’s what I want to do ’ . He ’s that frantic scientist . ”
Brian paints it another way . “ He think I was crazy , which is likely light to do . ”
When I require Brian what class it was , precisely , when he first add up up with his special skiing human knee , he laughs . “ I ’m not estimable with appointment . I just kind of go day by 24-hour interval . My lifetime is just day by day . ”
At some point Brian give up FabTech . And at some point – neither he nor Mattson remembers incisively when – came the change that was central to BTK ’s evolution : tendons .
Prosthetic or not , articulatio genus are essentially hinges . In a biological knee , the hinge is flank by tendons that help oneself it bend and move and snap back into blank space . These allow for tension ; when you push against them , they stretch , and when you stop pushing they pull the knee back into place . Prosthetic knees , especially active unity , are often supplement with spring or shock absorbers to cushion impact . But they do n’t supply natural tension . “ If you were standing right now and you bent your knee , most prosthetic knee would shinny to help you number back up and you ’d have to apply your able - bodied ramification to go directly again , ” explains Erenstone . Of Bartlett ’s knee , he say the tendons are “ more effective at giving you the force to square away out your leg again ” .
Brian ’s rubber tendons flank the hinge and provide natural - feeling resistivity and tension for the user . When Brian first begin trying the tendons , he had weld metallic element tabs to his socket – the part that hugs the stump of his leg – and ladder the rubber tendons through those lozenge to keep them in place . Today , two rotating Cam on either side of the knee avail the user telephone dial into precisely how much resistance they want for the task they ’re doing . The tendons can be replaced well , as can the shock absorber – this is design for a man go off 40 - foundation jumps , after all .
There are trade - offs , though . Erenstone told me that although he has n’t fitted an amputee with a Bartlett knee , he has service them before , which has let him insight into what they can and ca n’t do . “ His tendons are ginormous , ” Erenstone state , which means the knee is n’t good for every extreme sport . “ It ’s heavy , it ’s bulky , ” he says . Erenstone would n’t recommend it for John Rock climb , and “ for biking cross - land – in other words , going up hills – you have to overtake the tendon to do that , so it ’s ineffective . ” But for alpine skiing or downhill mountain biking , in his opinion , it ’s an “ fantabulous design ” . “ If you ’re going to have a specific prosthetic designed for wakeboarding and that ’s something you deal a pot about , yeah , I ’d match one in a heartbeat . ”
Nicole Roundy , a Paralympic snowboarder , enounce what many say about the BTK : it just feels more raw . “ you’re able to really devolve on those tendons … rather than getting a kickback , ” she told me . She ’s the first above - the - knee amputee to vie in adaptive snowboarding , and in the 2014 Winter Paralympics she came in eighth in the snowboard crown of thorns , ride on Brian ’s knee joint .
Back in Breckenridge , Brian and I made plans to do a snowboard run down the mountain together . I wanted to see the knee moving in person . It would be my second time on a snowboard ever , and I was queasy – I know the kind of skiing Brian like to do . Even if he did n’t race any more , he still talked about “ ripping ” – lunge – down the mountain . I would not be pull . Brian express mirth in his solemn , hearty way and graciously consort to take a trip-up down the bunny hill with me .
That never happened . Later that day I come up Brian in the bar on the second floor of the lodge , his leg in pieces on the board . The part that connected the knee to the rotating shaft below had snapped that morning ; as he exit down the mountain , his knee had jump to rotate wildly . He made it to the bottom unscathed , but gravel .
Since there ’s no stack biking circuit for handicapped people , Brian was competing once again with able - embodied athletes – only this time with two leg , one a epitome tendon knee . And he was winning . People initiate noticing .
Many of the people fit with the BTK find out about it by parole of mouth . When Brian started competing , word bed cover . Here was an amputee , hold his own against the best downhill muckle bikers in the man , wearing this unearthly - looking prosthetic leg he ’d construct himself . People would ask where they could get one , if he could make them one . He always said no . The knee had never been designed for other people to employ .
Brian still constructs all his knees by hand – “ my paw are like the quality control ” – but he does n’t always have ascendency over how well certain spell are manufactured . He tests every prototype himself , so nobody else gets ache if something breaks . As he put the pieces of his stage back together in the Breckenridge Browning automatic rifle , he evidence me that this was exactly why he had been skittish to set out producing the leg in the first place . “ I did n’t need anybody to try it , ” he said . “ It was too dangerous . ” In the early day he had another fear , too : “ I was worried that possibly it was a placebo . That it was all in my head . ”
He lastly caved for a friend , who wanted to get back on a mountain bike again . “ He ripped , he still rips today , ” says Brian . The spirit of seeing someone using his knee was one he had n’t anticipated : it was a young high .
Then in 2007 , Brian got a call from the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center – he commend the year because for get a Union contract , he had to found his fellowship , Left Side , Inc. The armed forces wanted to quiz his stifle on some active - duty soldier . Brian was hesitant . This still was n’t something for aggregate production . But saying ‘ no ’ to the military is hard to do .
In 2009 , amputee soldiers got their first BTK production unit . Since then , Brian has work on a regular basis with combat-ready soldiers and old stager . “ Now we just act where the need is , whether it be dynamic tariff still , veteran or civilian , ” he say . He secern me he could n’t talk about the detail of his work , but that when fitting soldiers one thing is made very clear to him : it had better work .
For a while , the military made up the entirety of Left Side Inc ’s business . But eventually they get down selling on the exposed market . Today , Brian Bartlett has a companionship and a product . He say it still feel very sudden – indeed , it took several year for him to stop racing and focalise entirely on the business .
He finally gave up racing in 2011 . Greg Mattson remember that sentence well : “ A duo of long time ago he was chute some huge gap and did n’t make it . He shatter his whole helmet and had to have his whole face run up up . And I was like , ‘ Dude , you ’re getting too old for this . We have an investment ’ . ”
“ I ’m not a business hombre , ” Brian sound out every time we talk . He has no melodic theme how many legs he ’s built – “ I build them all by hand , about 20 at a time . ” For him , it ’s not about make money ; it ’s about helping fellow amputees . If he had it his way , they ’d be give the knee off for destitute . “ When someone orders something from us , they ’re miss something in their living . They want it back . I do n’t think of this as a product . Other guys , they ’re not amputees , they do n’t get it . ”
Mattson is one of those other guys , and they collide sometimes . He sound out that sometimes Brian will reject mind for change that might make the knee cheaper . But if it makes the knee calculate bad , Brian wo n’t do it . “ He ’s high-flown – he want this knee to be perfect , even in the machining he wants it to look beautiful and have curves here and there . We prat heads . You might get two guys at a meeting who say we can cut half that cam off , and he says it makes it look funny . ”
What was once a wide - open market is now a crowded one . In the commercial market , two other prosthetic knees ( the XT9 made by K12 Prosthetics and the Moto Knee made by Biodapt ) contend for the petite sliver of amputees who are good for you and combat-ready enough to desire something for sport – and are able to afford it . Brian ’s genu cost about US$ 6,000 . Insurers are seldom unforced to cover an extra sports human knee , and broken or tire - down knees often have to be replaced whole .
“ That ’s better than get ahead any race , doing any challenger , ” he says . “ That ’s the novel high . Being capable to give someone a part of their life back . ”
This articlefirst appeared on Mosaicand republished here under Creative Commons license . Image byswirlingthoughtsunder Creative Commons license .
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