Doctors abandon Paralympic snowboard champion Mentel

This was announced by DenkProducties, with whom Mentel is organizing a seminar to be held next Tuesday, with her husband Edwin Spee.

Mentel first had to deal with bone cancer almost twenty years ago. This resulted in the amputation of his lower leg. The disease kept coming back, but time and time again Mentel was able to beat cancer and excel in a winter sport. As a Paralympic snowboarder, she has won gold at the Paralympic Games three times: once in Sochi 2014 (snowboard cross) and twice in Pyeongchang 2018 (snowboard cross and incline slalom).

The multiple world champion was chosen Paralympic Sportsman of the Year at the Sports Gala both years. Mentel ended her career at the end of 2018. She then joined her Mentelity Foundation, which aims to help children and young adults with disabilities practice sport.

Mentel carried the Dutch flag during the opening ceremony in Sochi and Pyeongchang. A few months before the 2018 Paralympic Games in South Korea, Mentel had to undergo major neck surgery because a vertebra had become unstable after a series of radiation treatments to bring a tumor under control. The cervical vertebra was removed and Mentel received a titanium construction to support his neck. Just three months later, she won two gold medals in Pyeonchang.

“Which medal is the most beautiful? They are all very different, ”Mentel said after his double success in South Korea. “For Sochi, I worked to snowboard in the Paralympic program. The medal was the icing on the cake. Here, I really had to fight for it.

In 2019, Mentel found herself in a wheelchair due to an incomplete spinal cord injury suffered during surgery on a tumor on her back. The snowboarder took part in the TV show in this wheelchair Dancing with the stars, in which she reached the final.