Amped: A Soldier’s Race for Gold in the Shadow of War

When above-the-knee amputeeswalk, we generate seven to nine times the force of our body weight right into the point where the prosthesis meets our residual leg. For me, that’s almost 1,500 pounds slamming into that socket. For any amputee, learning to walk with a prosthetic leg is a painful, grueling ordeal. Soon after army medic Kortney Clemons, who lost his right leg to a roadside bomb in Baghdad, began the process, he had more than walking in mind. He wanted to run, and run fast. Barely three years after the awful attack that changed his life forever, he aimed to join the elite corps of international athletes vying for gold in the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing. His account of his recovery from this catastrophic wound and his drive to become the first Iraq veteran to win Paralympic gold is one of the most remarkable, inspiring, and compelling stories in the history of sports.