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Cardrona NZ National Para Snowboard Team member Carl Murphy was born with a congenital defect to his lower right leg that was subsequently amputated when he was 2 years old but that hasn’t stopped him from getting up on a snowboard and competing at an international level. Carl was the 2012 World Champion, has an X Games silver medal and multiple World Cup medals already to his name and represented NZ at the 2014 Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi and the 2018 Games in PyeongChang. Disciplines: Para Snowboard Banked Slalom and Snowboard Cross Hometown: Wanaka Career highlights: 2012 World Champion; Silver medal in Adaptive Snowboardcross at X-Games 2014; 2014 and 2018 Paralympian; multiple World Cup medals |
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Carl rides his board with the help of a custom designed carbon fibre prosthetic leg.
Carl represented New Zealand in Para snowboard cross at the 2014 Paralympic Winter Games and achieved an impressive fourth place finish. He went on to compete at the 2018 Paralympic Winter Games in PyeongChang where he qualified for the quarter finals of the snowboard cross and finished fifth in banked slalom.
He started off his 2014/15 northern hemisphere campaign by winning bronze in boarder cross at the Europa cup and world cup silver in the new Paralympic discipline of banked slalom. In January Carl went one better, winning world cup gold in this discipline in Canada. He also took out world cup bronze in the boardercross. Carl was invited to compete at the X Games at the end of the January. In a nail biting finals race and testament to Carl’s competitive nature he launched over the finish line and claimed the silver medal.
In 2013 Carl won the Snow Sports NZ Overall Athlete of the Year Award and was recognised as the Snow Sports NZ Adaptive Snow Sports Athlete of the Year. He was named Central Otago Sportsman of the Year for 2015.