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| Images: Freedom Innovations |
Sean Reyngoudt, the world’s only amputee professional kiteboarder
and waverider, is featured in a new television action-adventure series,
“Catching Air,” which premiered Jan. 6, 2011 on the Discovery
Channel’s HD Theater. All six episodes will air weekly at 9 p.m. through
Feb. 17.
“Catching Air” aims to introduce a wider audience to the
extreme sport that is catching on with more and more adventurers, able-bodied
and amputees alike. The show takes viewers back to where the sport originated
— in the Columbian River Gorge at the town of Hood River, Ore. In the
first episode, the kiteboarding team of Reyngoudt and Andy Hurdman and crew
will tackle remote areas off the Florida Keys in the Atlantic Ocean, where they
will conquer large ocean swells as they break over shallow coral.
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Reyngoudt, a transtibial amputee, has competed in nearly every event
kiteboarding has to offer, and has experienced a 90-foot freedive, bluewater
spearfishing and shark-riding. After losing his leg in a forklift accident at
the age of 19 years, he dismissed his wheelchair, threw away his crutches and
began his transformation into a world-class extreme sports athlete.
He credits his success in large part to his prosthetist, who fitted him
with the Renegade foot from Freedom Innovations. Reyngoudt won his first
wakeboarding competition at the Extremity Games, and then began his
kiteboarding career. Today he is among the top kiteboarders in the world, and
the only amputee competitor.
