Skydiving & Becoming a Paralympic Snowboard Champion with Tyler Turner

November 25, 2025·31 min·2 clips

Tyler Turner says losing both legs was easier than quitting opioids — and he went cold turkey to get back to skydiving.

Tyler Turner had built his life around movement. He grew up skiing and snowboarding, then made skydiving his work before a 2015 accident changed almost everything about his body. After both legs were amputated, the question got very plain: could the sports that made him feel like himself still be part of his life? The second amputation was not quick or simple. Eighteen months after the first, Tyler was still dealing with pain, surgeries, and the sense that keeping one damaged leg was keeping him stuck. He chose the scarier option because it might give him a better shot at skydiving, surfing, and snowboarding again. Joy showed up before certainty did. He came out of surgery smiling, then spent weeks wondering whether the decision he had thought about for years would actually hold. Vancouver gave him the first real test. At the prosthetics office, standing on the second prosthetic hurt sharply, but it also felt natural enough to tell him something. Snowboarding was harder to face. Tyler was afraid one short attempt might prove the thing he feared most: that he could never snowboard again. Then came thirty feet. It hurt, but he was laughing, yelling, and feeling the thing he thought he might have lost. That first run started the grind back. He spent a season learning to ride with prosthetics and slowly found his way into the sports he loved. Then the results got almost ridiculous. Tyler became a three-time snowboard cross world champion and won gold at the 2022 Paralympic Games. Surfing and skydiving came back too, and in 2017 he became the first bilateral amputee to fly in a wingsuit. Near the end, he admits the size of it still has not fully landed, which is what makes the story hit quietly instead of shouting.

As heard by us

A clear, grounded comeback story about risk, pain, and rebuilding an athletic life after losing both legs.

Tyler Turner's comeback is told through the economics of a high-risk life: what gets lost, what is worth buying back, and what it costs to try.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a comeback story about injury, rehab, and a return to the sports he loved.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Wild Ideas Worth Living