Kevin Frost: a Feel for Skating

You don’t necessarily need to see where you’re going—or hear, for that matter —to be a speed skating champion. This may sound unbelievable, but in the case of Kevin Frost, a resident of Ottawa suburb Orléans, it’s true. Unfortunately, though, the International Paralympic Committee doesn’t recognize deaf-blind speed skating as a sport. Frost suffers from Usher Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that causes progressive hearing and vision loss; Frost’s sight has been reduced to tunnel vision at eight percent of normal visual range, and he’s only able to hear sounds that register at 90 decibels (imagine heavy traffic or a noisy home appliance) or above. Still, he managed to graduate from Gloucester High School with the help of a hearing aid and learning to lip-read. On top of it all, he won two silver and two bronze medals in his rookie year of competitive speed skating. He has been petitioning for years to get his category accepted as a Paralympic sport.