Snowboarder hopes to compete for GB in the Winter Paralympics in 2026 with a little help from LOC’s bespoke orthotics.
Nina Sparks has been snowboarding since the age of thirteen. Unfortunately, in 2021 she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. She was living in Austria at the time for snowboard training and started to feel numb in her right foot. This feeling of numbness spread up her body to her rib cage. The final prompt to seek medical help was when she sat on a heated chair lift and could not feel the heat, to the astonishment of her fellow snowboarder. Nina was duly assessed at Innsbruck hospital where after various MRI scans and other tests she was told she had MS. Worse still her right foot was permanently damaged.
By the time Nina came to see LOC in April of this year, she was really struggling with her walking but was determined to continue to snowboard, with the objective of getting into the GB Paralympic snowboard team. Nina ‘found’ LOC because she just happened to be following an LOC patient on Instagram, he had suffered a severe spinal injury but was determined to do as much mountaineering as possible with the ultimate goal of walking up Everest. Nina thought that if LOC could help him achieve his goal then they might be able to help her.
We will let Nina take up the story: “First I had an assessment of my leg and ankle function followed by a session in LOC’s Gait Lab which used some pretty cool cameras and high tech stuff to show how I walk and which part of my foot my weight goes through at each part of a footstep. This highlighted a few issues I have, one of which is drop foot and the other is that my leg isn’t straightening properly so my foot isn’t flat on the floor when I walk or stand.”
Anna Courtney, one of LOC’s senior orthotists, prescribed a carbon fibre AFO for Nina. Within three weeks it had broken. As Nina explains: “Apparently it turns out that rigid carbon fibre is not suitable for the off- snow training required of a para snowboarder!!” Anna’s solution was to prescribe a Neuroswing AFO which has an ankle joint controlled by springs. This has proved more sturdy and Nina comments: “It’s amazing, truly life changing. As my mum so kindly puts it ‘you’re walking like a normal person again’.”
As the Neuroswing is not actually suitable wear for snowboarding, the next step was a challenging operation to make an orthosis that would fit inside a snowboard boot. After an at times hilarious casting for this – just imagine layers of socks, cling film, quick setting plaster and more cling film and a foot jammed into a snowboard boot – we had a cast that could be given to LOC Manufacturing to start making this unique orthosis.
Nina was fitted with her snowboarding AFO in August. It has a hinge on it so Nina’s ankle is more flexed. “The AFO fitted perfectly straight away and immediately I could feel it working, pushing against my calf to flex my ankle in my boot, something which hasn’t happened for over a year!!”
Nina has been testing her new AFO out at the SnowZone in Milton Keynes and The Snow Centre at Hemel Hemsptead in preparation for joining the Para Snowboard Team in Spain for training on 18th September. We wish her luck in her endeavours to gain selection to the GB team. You can follow Nina on Instagram snowyoda_gb
