Kelsey O’Driscoll

Age: 31
Occupation: Outpatient Pediatric Asthma Coordinator
Residence: Glens Falls
Family: Fiancé, four parents, and four siblings 
Sport: Para Alpine Skiing

By Jaime Collins

Getting to the top requires grit, determination, and discipline, but sometimes it takes even more. Imagine life throwing you a curve ball that doesn’t just knock you down but steals everything. That’s where Kelsey O’Driscoll found herself in the months following an accident in 2021 that left her lying face down in the snow, broken, everything gone in an instant. “The first thing that went through my mind was I just ruined my life,” she says. Yet today, the 31-year-old is the top-ranked woman in the nation in four-track para skiing and is one to watch at the Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympic Winter Games in Italy from March 6-15.

“My mom was a skier her whole life, and from the time I was two, I was on a pair of skis in the backyard,” says Kelsey. “I have no memory of learning how to ski. I only remember just skiing.” Her father, a whitewater guide for a summer camp, brought Kelsey and her mom to North Creek where they fell in love with the Adirondacks and soon after moved to the area. Kelsey grew up skiing at Gore Mountain and spent her summers surfing on the New Jersey coast with her family who describe her as being fast and fearless.

In 2005, she suffered her first of two serious accidents. At the age of 11, after going over a small cliff on a sled she landed in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Albany Medical Center. “It was a scary time, and I didn’t know what was going on. But the nurses were incredible. I remember the day we left the hospital I looked up at my mom and told her I’m going to work there someday.”

Throughout her recovery, that inspiration to care for others stayed with her, and in 2013 she earned a spot on the EMT squad in Lowell, Mass. before switching to the Johnsburg EMS squad. With a little experience two years later, she combined that passion for caring with her passion for skiing and hit the slopes as a ski patroller at Gore, her home mountain. A few years later, she graduated from SUNY Adirondack and began serving as a pediatric nurse at Albany Med, a job she performed in addition to her role at Gore. Kelsey had grown through those years to fulfill her dreams and live with purpose.

Always ready for outdoor adventure and fun, Kelsey went sledding with family on a rare day off. It was March 6, 2021, and she and her boyfriend decided to take one last run. Moments later they hit a divot in the snow, and flying through the air, Kelsey extended her arms to catch her fall, a natural move that stopped her upper body’s forward momentum while her lower body was forced overhead. Instantly, she knew her back was broken. “The pain was unlike anything I ever experienced. My ski patrol nurse brain kicked in, and I scanned my body head to toe. My fingers were moving, but when I tried to wiggle my toes I couldn’t feel them.”

She tried instead to move her ankles, knowing it would not make her back worse. “I could hear my boots scratch against the snow, so I know they moved. I just couldn’t feel them.” The second she could breathe air back into her lungs, she said, “Call 911 and ask for a helicopter.” She continued, “All I could think of what I’m not going to be a nurse again. I’m not going to ski. I’m never going to surf. I’m not going to be a patroller. It was all gone in an instant.”

“The first four months, I was an absolute miserable human being,” recalls Kelsey. I was so frustrated, and was angry with myself because I ignored the gut feeling I had on the top of that last run. A little voice told me it was not a good idea, but I didn’t listen to it.”

That summer, at the four month mark after her accident, Kelsey recalled meeting and skiing with an adaptive skier at Gore. He was an athlete with the High Fives Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that focuses on preventing life-changing injuries and provides resources and hope when they do happen. “He’s a sit skier, and he’s incredible,” she says. “There’s nothing at Gore he can’t ski, and as I’m trying to find a way back to surfing and skiing, it dawns on me that I know someone who does this stuff.” He told Kelsey about High Fives and connected her. Less than a week later, she was back on a surfboard. “I’m just lying on the surfboard, and someone else is doing all the work, but I’m in the ocean, riding a wave and thinking I was actually going to be okay. I’m still me. I’m going to get through this. It was the first time I felt that.” Kelsey’s inherently sunny outlook had returned.

A few months after riding waves and while relearning to stand and walk with elbow crutches, she connected with another friend, James “Jimmer” Hayes (Athlete Profile, March 2015), an adaptive ski instructor at Gore. Kelsey didn’t know how, but she knew if she could get into the ocean, there must be a way to get back on the mountain. And she knew Jimmer could help.

Together, they planned her return to skiing as Kelsey prepared her body through tough physical therapy sessions. In December 2021, she made her first tentative turns with Gore adaptive instructor Bruce Tubbs, holding a pole as she made her way down a beginner run. Sensing Kelsey’s disappointment she wasn’t skiing on her own, Bruce said, “Wait here. Let me go grab something.” He came back with outriggers, essentially ski poles but more similar to forearm crutches with small skis on the ends to provide balance.

Bruce offered some initial instructions on this new method called four-track skiing, and Kelsey took to it naturally. “I cruised down that run making big turns all the way across like a kid on their first ski lesson,” she recalls with pure delight. “I went for it, and I never looked back. By the time I got to the bottom, I was sobbing. My mom was crying. Everyone was crying because it was just right. The patrollers and the other instructors in the lodge had all come out and were cheering because I was skiing again.”

“I am the person and skier I am today because of Gore Mountain and these people,” says Kelsey. “From the second I started skiing again I couldn’t go anywhere without someone cheering me on. It was hugely powerful. The people who work there are amazing, from the snowmakers to the lift people to the electricians, ski schoolers, patrollers, everyone. Right from the start, even though I know it looks different, I didn’t feel different. This always was and still is Gore. I love this place and these people with my whole heart. When I am here, I am home. I never feel out of place. Not with crutches, not with outriggers, and not with my chair.” She also credits her lifetime of skiing experience for its role in her comeback. “Even though I couldn’t feel it, my legs knew what do to.” 

After that first winter challenging herself on increasingly steep and challenging terrain, Kelsey was eager to come back to work on the ski patrol, and she found the Gore team enthusiastic and helpful then, too. “This is an environment in which people are encouraging. They say yes when they could say no.” As a four-track ski patroller, she was faced with additional challenges. Again, help from her colleagues helped her forge a path forward, such as when faced with the task of opening a new trail and needing to carry a heavy drill on skis. Says Kelsey, “Everyone around me is seeing the issue and asking, ‘How do we fix it?’ The whole team just went straight to collectively brainstorming solutions, and they found me a holster.”

Working again with her fellow ski patrollers, Kelsey feels honored to be part of the team. Gore Mountain’s history is significant, and part of its legacy is the formation of one of the first ski patrols in the nation in 1934 under the leadership of registered nurse Lois Perret Schaefer. “It means something special here because we all know we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.”

After that first challenging winter relearning to ski and yet another relearning ski patrol duties including how to run rescue toboggans, Kelsey was feeling good. She had also returned to her pediatric nursing duties at Albany Medical Center. 

Back in her happy place, she began to wonder what racing would be like on four-track skis. It was a thought that stuck, and she began to research it. It turns out four-track ski racing as an adaptive discipline is rather rare. In this Paralympic year, in fact, only five four-track skiers in the world are classified as racers. Reaching out to the High Fives Foundation CEO, Roy Tuscany, Kelsey discovered he’s a four-track skier. Roy, in turn, put her in touch with Adam Hall from New Zealand, one of the most decorated Paralympians of all time, who proved to be a wellspring of information and good advice.

Later that year in 2023 at an adaptive ski camp in Vermont, Kelsey pushed the possibility forward, asking if anyone else was interested in racing and if they would set up gates to make a course. During her first time ever racing gates as a four-track skier, one onlooker shot video. Unbeknownst to Kelsey, that video was sent to Erik Petersen, director of the Competition Center for the National Sports Center for the Disabled. “A couple of days later,” says Kelsey, “I got a phone call from Erik asking how long I’d been racing. When I said that was the first run I ever did in gates in my life, he thought I was joking.” Knowing he found a talented racer, he immediately invited her to join the Nationals event as a forerunner (one who tests a racecourse just prior to the event) that upcoming April 2023. With that event on the horizon, Kelsey continued training throughout the season. “I knew lots about skiing but literally zero about ski racing.”

The year after her forerunning experience, Kelsey was invited to race the entirety of the season, and at the end of that first year of racing, she found herself crowned national champion in slalom and giant slalom and runner-up in the super-G. “One year in racing, and I’m already on the US National Para Alpine Team. It’s been an incredible, whirlwind experience.” She is now World Cup qualified in all the alpine events – slalom, giant slalom, super G, downhill, and alpine combined (a combined time for one super G and one slalom run).

December 2025 was a big month for Kelsey. She won a super G and placed third in the super G and downhill in the World Cup circuit, racking up the points she’ll need to be on Team USA. To finish out an amazing year, Kelsey also got engaged to her longtime boyfriend.

During the approach to the 2026 Winter Games in Milano Cortina, a national committee reviews all race results and considers additional criteria before selecting six women for the U.S. Paralympic Alpine Team. “I’m currently the top-ranked among US women. It’s crazy, and it’s awesome. Amazing,” says Kelsey. “There is no world in which a ski patroller breaks her back and goes to the next Paralympics. I wouldn’t be doing any of this if it weren’t for the Olympic Authority and the people at Gore.” 

To qualify for Team USA, Kelsey is required to garner the points she needs on the World Cup circuit. Doing that means taking time away from her nursing work to travel the European race circuit. Currently she’s on leave from her job at Albany Med. The first week of November, she hit the road, and her first stop was Park City, followed by some brief training time at the Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. Then she was off to train with the team at Big Sky, Montana to prepare for a rigorous pre-Olympic World Cup circuit that began December 10 at Steinach am Brenner in Austria. Selections for Team USA take place in mid-February. At press time, Kelsey won two of her races on January 5-6 at the Winter Park Open in Winter Park, Colo.

As she embarks on this exciting worldwide alpine adventure, Kelsey knows well the adaptive ski community and the staff and skiers at Gore are at home supporting her from afar. “I love this mountain and this sport, and I would not be the person I am today without them. While I’m away, I’ll miss my Gore family, but I am also immensely proud to represent what a Gore patroller can do on the world stage.”

Jaime Collins (jcollins@orda.org) is a communications manager at the Olympic Regional Development Authority who writes stories about athletes, sports, events, and programs across the venues. She also serves on the board of the North American Snowsports Journalists Association.