BE INSPIRED: JOSHUA OLSON

BY CRAIG COLLINS

PROBABLY NOT MANY WARRIOR GAMES COMPETITORS CAN SAY THEY SERVED ON ACTIVE DUTY FAR LONGER AFTER THEIR INJURY THAN BEFORE – AND NOT MANY ARE INELIGIBLE TO COMPETE IN THEIR SIGNATURE EVENT BECAUSE THEY’VE ALREADY COMPETED AT THE INTERNATIONAL LEVEL, IN THE PARALYMPIC GAMES. BOTH ARE TRUE OF JOSH OLSON.

Olson grew up in Spokane, Washington, knowing he would serve in the military, and joined the Army right out of high school, in 1997, at the age of 17. He served a year in Kosovo, a year in Korea, and then in 2003, Olson, then a staff sergeant in the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, deployed to Iraq. In October of that year, his company was attacked by a group of guerrilla fighters while on patrol in Tal Afar, northern Iraq. It was early in the war, before the enemy began its widespread use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and before the Defense Department had begun deploying mine-resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles to ground units. “We didn’t have up-armored vehicles at the time,” Olson said. “We just had cargo Humvees that were left over from the first Gulf War.”

After the enemy fired a rocket-propelled grenade at Olson’s Humvee that wounded two soldiers in the back of the vehicle, Olson came out shooting, standing next to the passenger-side wheel well and firing at insurgents. A second grenade skidded under the vehicle and detonated, and the blast took off most of Olson’s right leg. In the days before military medicine had developed the junctional tourniquets that compressed the femoral artery at the hip, a quickthinking medic fitted Olson with a pair of medical anti-shock trousers (MAST) – inflatable pants that kept blood squeezed into his torso until he reached a hospital.

Olson flew to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in a medically induced coma and woke eight days later to find his mother and father in the room with him – he thought for a while that he was still in Iraq, and wondered why his parents had traveled so far to see him – and his right leg completely gone. Surgeons had performed an amputation known as a hip disarticulation, the removal of the entire lower limb and the resurfacing of the pelvic bone to bear weight while sitting or standing. Six years into his military career, it looked as if Olson’s service was over – but actually, a new Army career lay just ahead.

It was a long and difficult rehabilitation for Olson, who struggled to find a prosthesis that didn’t hurt. For some reason he was more comfortable shifting his weight toward the back of the socket that fit the leg to his hip, and none were designed to accommodate a person who wanted to get up and move around for longer than a few minutes. “It was mostly your elderly patients that would use those kind of prosthetics,” he said, “and they weren’t walking very much. They were just using it as a transition from a chair to a bed, to go to the bathroom and things like that.”

Olson worked with a prosthetics company in Orlando, Florida, to devise a more flexible design, one with a socket that could be adapted and customized to fit the wearer’s preference. On a barroom cocktail napkin, he and a prosthetist sketched out a better design, with an adjustable liner that could be customized to make the leg comfortable enough to wear all day. Back at Walter Reed, doctors liked the new design – now widely known as the Olson Design – so much they began sending copies to other wounded soldiers.

About 18 months into his rehabilitation at Walter Reed, Olson met John Register, a Desert Shield and Desert Storm veteran and former track star from the University of Arkansas who’d lost his leg in an accident and had gone on to medal at the Paralympic Games. Register encouraged Olson to become a competitive athlete in adaptive sports. At the time, Olson had no desire to compete in any events that required him to use a wheelchair: “At the time, I was really struggling with my prosthesis and … my thinking was that for me, being in a wheelchair was a step back.”

Olson was, however, an excellent marksman. He accompanied his occupational therapists to a trap and skeet shooting range and, shooting at targets with a shotgun for the first time, hit 49 out of 50, an unheard-of first-time score. Soon he was at Fort Benning, Georgia trying out for a spot on the Army Marksmanship Unit (AMU), an elite group of competitive shooters established in 1956 that wins national and international shooting contests and just happened to be looking for wounded warriors to join the squad.

“I went down and had a really successful tryout and got along with the team, and got picked up,” Olson said. But there was a hang-up: While he was at Fort Benning, he’d been medically retired from the Army. It took him seven months to have the decision reversed, and in June 2005, he became the first wounded service member to join the AMU.

It was the first of several firsts for Olson. He was soon traveling around the world, competing at shooting events in Australia, Spain, Germany, and France. In winning gold and silver medals at an event sanctioned by the International Paralympic Committee, he became the first active-duty service member to qualify for the Paralympic Games. He counts the opening ceremony for the 2012 Games in London among his fondest memories.

Olson’s success with the AMU was a factor in the unit’s decision, later that year, to expand and include 24 wounded warriors and members of its new Paralympic and Instructor sections – soldiers who would train other Army marksmen, compete at events, and serve as Army ambassadors at marksmanship venues worldwide.

It was a more fruitful decade than Olson had hoped for, back when the medical evaluation board had prematurely retired him – but in 2015, he sensed it was time to move on. “I never took breaks,” he said. I was just always training. I just kind of got burned out and it became work instead of fun.”

After leaving the AMU, Sgt. 1st Class Olson took a new position: Operations NCO at the Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group at Fort Meade, Maryland, where he helped coordinate and schedule training events for soldiers who would experience the kind of combat he and his company encountered in Tal Afar. In 2017, on his own terms, Olson finally ended his 20-year Army career.

Interestingly, it wasn’t until after he was done with competitive shooting that Olson became interested in other adaptive sports and began training for the Warrior Games. “After I retired, I was looking for something to do,” he said. “And getting back into adaptive sports – not only did I get inspiration from the other athletes I see every day, but it gives me a sense of purpose and drive, and honestly, it just makes me feel a lot better.” At the 2019 Games, he’ll compete in powerlifting, archery, shot put, discus, and rowing.

Olson has since returned to Spokane, where he’s studying emergency management, and recently became engaged to be married – if all goes as planned, the wedding will happen in the fall of 2019. When the competition season slows down, he hopes also to begin taking classes in Whitworth University’s kinesiology program. “I’d like to study exercise science,” he said, “and not only continue with adaptive sports, but train other people for it.”

In order to do that, he knew, he would have to get over his aversion to the wheelchair. He’s discovered that it’s not the impediment he once imagined; wheelchair athletics has introduced him to a difficult and complex skill set.

“I recently went to an adaptive sports camp and sat in a wheelchair for three days, playing different wheelchair sports,” he said, “and it’s really hard. My hat’s off to the athletes who can do that.” Olson wants to master his wheelchair skills for two reasons: to be good enough to compete in Spokane’s wheelchair basketball league, and to become an adaptive sports trainer who knows what he’s talking about.

“Learning how to use the wheelchair is making me a more wellrounded athlete,” he said. “Eventually I’m hoping to work with other athletes, and if I’m going to explain anything, whether training or coaching or mentoring, I’ll want to have the credibility of someone who’s actually been there and done that.” If he’s fortunate enough to try out for next year’s games, he’s aiming for spots on the Army’s wheelchair basketball and rugby teams.

On the threshold of a new career and married life, Olson is grateful for the people who helped him rediscover a sense of purpose and competitiveness after his injury. “I got hurt six years into my Army career,” he said, “and I was very fortunate to be able to stay and finish out my last 14 or so. I’ve had great experiences and great places to work, and met a lot of great people. And with friends and family like mine, it would be really hard for someone not to be successful.”