The week since Patrick Halgren won silver in the men’s standing super-G has been nothing short of a whirlwind.
“I cracked the course record for autographs and pictures in Cortina,” Halgren said. “It’s been surreal to say the least.”
It’s not hard to understand why Halgren has drawn the attention of media outlets and fans alike. He stood on the Paralympic podium to accept his medal using his crutch as an air guitar — his braids patriotically dyed red, blonde and blue — and his post-race interviews were filled with proclamations of his love for champagne and women interspersed with philosophical reflections.
He was also a surprise. Halgren had not been among the projected medalists in the super-G. He’d never finished on a World Cup podium, and at his first Paralympics in Beijing, he placed 24th in slalom and 26th in giant slalom. In his first event of the Milan Cortina Games, the downhill, he recorded a DNF.
But having an idea of what to expect from the course terrain, and being surrounded by friendly faces in the crowd, alleviated any nerves before the race.
“I felt just so at peace,” Halgren said. “I felt pretty confident, but I also had my village there.”
As he prepared to drop in for his run, Halgren thought of all the people who had supported him or made an impact in his journey to that point: his parents, Peter and Kathy, who had made their first-ever trip to Europe to cheer him on; his late brother Sven; the children at Children’s Hospital Colorado; the people he met while visiting a school in Chile.
That gave him the extra push he needed.
Halgren skied to a factored time of 1 minute, 13.10 seconds — just 0.98 seconds slower than race winner Robin Cuche of Switzerland — and defied the projections with a 2nd-place finish.
His biggest highlight that day, though?
“My mom seeing me be the man that she always dreamed I could be, and my father's eyes lighting up every time he looks at me,” Halgren said before adding with a chuckle, “and every time he sees a moped truck.”
Halgren believes his result was an accumulation of not only the years of dedicated training, but also his growth mindset.
“If you have something bigger than yourself, if you are chasing that character development and doing things for other people without expecting a reward, not only will you become the best of yourself and the fulfillment of life will be there, but you'll probably get the medals and the women and the champagne too,” Halgren said. “You can have it all.”
Thirteen years ago, Halgren was in a motorcycle accident that sent him into a month-long coma. His heart stopped four times, and he needed a blood transfusion. When he woke up, his left leg had been amputated above the knee.
It’s what Halgren described as “being self-aware in the face of adversity” that has been one of the guiding factors through his life.
“I'm so lucky that I was born with struggle,” Halgren said. “You can't have sunshine without the rain. You can't have joy without the pain. It's that beautiful duality of life.”
Learning how to 'SvendIt'
Halgren’s twin brother, Lucas Sven, was what Halgren affectionately called a “ski bum.” Sven dropped out of college with one semester left in his senior year to chase what truly made him happy in life: spending time on the slopes. That first began by getting a job parking cars at Mount Snow in Vermont, and he worked all the way up to becoming a member of the ski patrol.
Along the way, Sven began volunteering with the adaptive ski program. As Halgren described, one day of volunteering would translate to one free day pass, which Sven would use to take their father, Peter, to the mountain.
Where other family members were perhaps a bit perplexed by Sven’s decision to pursue skiing full-time, according to Halgren, Peter was thrilled by the development. He was a competitive skier himself in his youth before a motorcycle accident caused by a drunk driver left him with limited function of one of his legs. Peter went from being a freshman in college on a full scholarship for ski racing to being unable to put his foot in a ski boot for six years.
“Basically ruined his life,” Halgren said. “In hindsight, it made it but at the time, he was devastated. So, he basically invented the ski blade. Cut the tip off a ski, put a two by four on it, and leather straps, because he couldn't wear a ski boot.”
Peter, undeterred by his injury, went on to learn to ski on one leg. Halgren called it “an unfortunate twist of fate” that, forty-some-odd years later, he would become the one skiing on one leg — and he had two seasoned experts to guide him through it.
“I had a private instructor through my father, and my extremely smart brother, Sven, had the idea to take over the world being a one-legged skier, and that's kind of how it happened,” Halgren remembered.
It wasn’t a quick or easy transition taking up para Alpine skiing — at first, Halgren said, “I hated it” — but with the support of his family, the sport grew into a passion. Soon enough, he and Sven dropped everything to pursue skiing across the globe.
“We started traveling the world from above and below the equator, and doing two winters in a season, skiing 300 days a year, working the crappiest job at a ski resort and loving it,” Halgren said. “We were having the time of our lives.”
The brothers lived in a van together as they trekked across continents in search of the best snow. Then, in December of 2016, Sven was in a serious motorcycle accident in New Zealand. He died from his injuries.
In the wake of the tremendous loss, Halgren and his family devised a way of carrying on Sven’s memory: stickers. The blue-and-yellow design features the motto “SvendIt,” which is a play on the phrase “send it,” meaning to go all-out or do something with full commitment and no hesitation. It’s a fitting nod to Sven’s adventurous lifestyle.
The stickers have followed Halgren through all of his endeavors, from New Zealand to Sweden to Colorado, and now, all throughout the Paralympic Village and various venues in Cortina.
But there’s one spot in particular that Halgren is sure Sven would appreciate having his name plastered: the bottom of a toilet seat in a bar called La Marmita in La Parva, Chile. One of Halgren’s own downhill skis is on the roof of the bar, right next to a pair belonging to Lindsey Vonn.
In addition to the stickers, Halgren sports a massive “SvendIt” tattoo across his abdomen. He also honors his brother by indulging in the thrill of taking calculated risks and reminding others to do the same.
“Go fast, take chances, but wear a helmet,” Halgren said. “You’ve gotta sometimes get close to that edge of control to feel like you’re living, but you’ve gotta find that line too so you know where to stop.”
Chasing the sunshine through the rain
After Sven’s passing, Halgren continued skiing with a renewed purpose until he reached a crossroads in his career seven years ago when he lost the work visa that allowed him to remain in New Zealand.
“I kind of had to decide what I was going to do with my life,” he recalled. “Am I going to keep chasing the skiing dream, or am I going to break my own heart, give up and go get a real job? And I fortunately chose the hard, right decision of being a full-time ski bum and put all my eggs in one basket, and it worked.”
He was helped in part by two-time Paralympic gold medalist Adam Hall, who he struck up a friendship with after a chance encounter at a McDonald’s in New Zealand. Hall is the one who told him about the National Sports Center for the Disabled based out of Winter Park, Colorado, where Halgren wound up relocating. Both Halgren and Hall would depart the 2026 Paralympics with a silver medal: Halgren in the men’s standing super-G, and Hall in the men’s standing slalom.
Now back in the U.S., Halgren splits his time between Winter Park, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, and on the road in his van like he and his brother once did.
"It's pretty surreal just to think about [Sven], and I wish he could be here, but at the same time, that's the duality of life,” Halgren said after his final race of the 2026 Paralympics. “It sucks, but I needed that all to happen to give me the kick in the butt to become this extraordinary thing.”
Halgren credits a lot of his larger-than-life personality to his brother, whose nickname was “Hollywood” thanks to his extroversion and showmanship.
“I'm usually on crutches, kind of walking around like a weird cyborg robot gorilla, and you know it from a mile away,” Halgren said. “When I enter a room and you want to know what's going on, and I know you're going to look at me, I give you something to look at. Why not?”
Halgren has adopted a piece of his own little Hollywood — he recently released a short film titled “Us and Them,” which was created by a team of disabled skiers seeking to shift the narrative around adaptive skiing.
The film, which can be found for free on YouTube, emphasizes that disabled athletes should be viewed through the lens of their abilities and accomplishments, not just as a person to feel sorry for.
That’s the perspective that Halgren has wholeheartedly exemplified. Rather than let his negative experiences define him, Halgren has continually taken control of his own narrative and steered it in a direction that leaves a lasting positive mark on those around him.
“I'm here for everybody who's supported me, and everybody who has really hard things going on,” Halgren said. “I’ve got so many inspirations in my life and so much motivation to do this performance that I just love to do. I get to put a smile on people's faces who are in real tough situations, and that's what it's all about.”