Randy Snow

Thomas Randall " Randy " Snow ( born May 24, 1959 in Austin, Texas, † November 19, 2009 in El Salvador ) was an American wheelchair athletes. In the Summer Paralympics 1992 he won the gold medal in wheelchair tennis in singles and in doubles.

Life

Snow was born in 1959 as the son of a lawyer in a Texas extended family and grew up in Pampa. Even as a teenager, he was a successful athlete and had a career as a professional tennis or baseball player in view. At the age of 16, he was hit on the farm of a friend of a 500 -pound bales of hay, which he suffered down a paraplegic from the waist.

In 1977 he received his degree at the Terrell High School and enrolled at the University of Texas. In the following years he suffered from Alkohohl and drug problems, he could finally overcome with the help of sport. With the support of Jim Hayes, Commissioner of wheelchair sports at the University, he founded a wheelchair basketball team. Soon after, he also coached racing wheelchair driving and wheelchair tennis. In 1986, he completed his studies with a Bachelor in Business Administration.

In 1984 Snow at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles on 1,500 m wheelchair race, a demonstration race, and won the silver medal. At the Paralympic Games in Barcelona in 1992, he won the gold medal in wheelchair tennis in singles and in doubles. In 1996, he was able to win in the Paralympic Games in Atlanta with the American wheelchair basketball team the bronze medal. In Sydney in 2000, he took again part of the wheelchair tennis competition, but was defeated in the third round of the Australian David Hall. In 1991 he was honored by the International Tennis Federation as the first world champion in wheelchair tennis. In 2004, he became the first Paralympic athlete in the United States Olympic Hall of Fame.

In addition to his career as an active athlete Snow worked for the wheelchair manufacturer Sunrise Medical. He also became involved in the dissemination of wheelchair tennis and resulted in the U.S. and around the world camps for children and youth through. In the 1990s he was a member of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and worked for the National Council on Disability.

Snow died in 2009 during a wheelchair tennis camps in El Salvador of a heart attack. He had just completed a master's degree in psychology at the University of Phoenix. In 2012 he was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.