Travis Gaertner Is Headed To His Third Paralympics — But In His Second Sport, And For His Second Country

Travis Gaertner will be going for a third Paralympic gold medal when the Paris Games commence Aug. 28.

But there is a twist.

The United States will be his second country on this stage.

Para-cycling will be his second sport.

Gaertner’s last appearance came five Paralympics and 20 years ago.

You read all of that right. The 44-year-old from Burien, Washington, just outside of Seattle, was last a Paralympian at the Athens Games in 2004, where he won his second gold medal in a row for Canada’s men’s wheelchair basketball team.

“Being my third Paralympic Games, 20 years apart, I couldn’t be more excited about that,” Gaertner said. “The fact that I could do that. I think for many years, I thought that it wouldn’t be possible — 20 years apart to do it again. I’m ecstatic. I’m ecstatic.”

So what made the Winnipeg, Manitoba, native decide to give up playing basketball?

Gaertner, a 2003 University of Illinois graduate, was still a young man when he won gold medals in 2000 in Sydney and 2004 in Athens, playing alongside one of the greatest wheelchair players of all time in Patrick Anderson.

After that, he decided to focus on his career as an actuary and starting a family.

“Basketball being a team sport … the time with the team is much greater,” said Gaertner, also a two-time world championships bronze medalist in hoops. “I wanted to focus on a very successful corporate career, and I’ve done that.

“Cycling, as an individual sport, is something that could marry with my goals and aspirations as a corporate actuary and be able to do both of those at the same time with a supportive employer.”

Gaertner, born without a left leg and half of a right leg, went to Illinois in large part because of its successful wheelchair basketball program. While there he met his future wife, Laura, and found a job with an American company.

“So I became an American citizen, and that’s where I wanted to be,” said Gaertner, a U.S. citizen since 2012. “I wanted to be here in the U.S. I wasn’t planning on going back to Canada, so it just became a natural transition.

“Now I want to compete for the U.S. since I feel like this is my country.”

Handcycling didn’t become part of his competitive life until 2017, and he joined the U.S. road team in 2018. He’s since competed at four world championships, earning a pair of bronze medals.

“Fitness has been a very important part of my life,” said Gaertner, who competes in the MH4 classification. “So I was still training just to be healthy and maintain my independence as a disabled athlete — that’s very important as a wheelchair athlete to maintain your independence. And then that competitive bug came back and while I was introduced to handcycle, and that desire for speed came right back.”

After being an alternate for the Tokyo Paralympics that took place in 2021, Gaertner earned a trip to the Paris Paralympics following a second-place finish at the PossAbilities U.S. Paralympics Cycling Time Trial in early July in Loma Linda, California. Gaertner finished 1.69 seconds behind Matt Tingley, who was originally named an alternate but then named to the team when the International Paralympic Committee gave the U.S. two extra slots for road racing.

While the start-and-stop aspect of basketball and the all-out racing on a bike are much different, there was a relatable skill — that was Gaertner’s need for speed. One of his basketball coaches said Gaertner always needed to be on a full-court press even if the rest of the team wasn’t because he played much better overall when he was moving quicker.

“I think I just always had that desire and love for speed,” Gaertner said. “Obviously I’m a competitive person having gone to the Paralympics twice with a different sport and wheelchair basketball being a very difficult one to compete in. The skill sets that I learned with that was that competitive drive to want to challenge myself and find limits and exceed those limits.”

One thing Gaertner makes clear is that he doesn’t want your pity or your prayers. He says as much on his website, gaertnergold.com. Not only has he embraced his situation as a Para athlete, he wants to see what more he can get out of his body.

That all led to his path to the Paris Paralympics, a journey 20 years in the making.

“It just means that there’s always a way for you to stretch your goals and stretch your limits, figure out what you can do as a person, be the best person that you can possibly be,” he said. “You’re your own benchmark. So I think about myself, ‘I am my own benchmark.’ …

“If I were to compare myself as a child, for example, to the neighborhood children who are running around in the playground, I would think of myself very poorly. But if I think about, ‘How can I be like the best that I possibly can?’ That’s the combination making the Paralympic Games now. It’s taking all those steps to absolutely do everything I possibly can in every area, from nutrition, to cycling, to strength, to sports psych, to family life balance, to work balance to all of those things that could bring everything together in the best possible way. That’s resulted in me being selected for this team.”

Steve Drumwright is a journalist based in Murrieta, California. He is a freelance contributor to USParaCycling.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.