COVER STORY
A Prosthetic Technician’s Role at the Games
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JUNE/JULY 2021 | O&P ALMANAC
Snethen notes that a large proportion of the athletes who visit the repair stations are from third-world countries, “because they don’t have the resources other countries have for their athletes.” Working at the repair station, “you have to widen your technical abilities,” he says. In addition to repairing prosthetic devices, Snethen has been pulled in to work on orthoses and wheelchairs. “In wheelchair rugby and wheelchair basketball, wheelchairs just get mangled and beat up,” he says—and some wheelchairs are even damaged on the flights over. Snethen notes that helping elite athletes achieve their goals is extremely rewarding—even if it means just helping them get to their competition venue. “In Lima, I helped a gentleman get a prosthesis to fit” so he could travel from Athletes’ Village to his event. “He was competing in sit volleyball, but his prosthesis was in such bad shape that he couldn’t even ambulate to the area he needed to be in. I helped him get a prosthesis—it wasn’t laminated, but it helped him get by” during the Parapan Games. He also got an education about how prosthetists and technicians meet athletes’ needs in different ways. “It was interesting to see how other countries set up their running prostheses,” Snethen says. “We have
Certified prosthetic assistant/ technician John Snethen, far right, has volunteered at Ottobock’s technical repair stations at the Rio Paralympic Games and the Parapan Games in Lima, Peru, and plans to repair components in Tokyo. a set way that we set ours up here, at Sabolich, so it was interesting to see all these different ways. And all of these different ways enabled athletes from all over the world to compete—and run strong—on the different setups.” Being part of the Paralympic Games is “beyond an honor,” says Snethen. “It’s one thing to make somebody walk again—it’s a great feeling to know that something I built helped somebody walk. So, it’s a step above when you not only bring some normality back to someone’s life, but you help them go beyond normality, to push harder than anything I could do. It’s such a great feeling to know that they didn’t let anything stop them, and I had a hand in helping them achieve their goals.”
PHOTOS: John Snethen, Scott Sabolich Prosthetics and Research
John Snethen, a certified prosthetic assistant/technician at Scott Sabolich Prosthetics and Research, will soon be heading to Tokyo to provide technical services to athletes in need of repairs as part of Ottobock’s role as the Official Technical Service Partner of the Paralympic Games. Ottobock contributes to the Paralympic Games with an on-site, international team of technicians, providing technical repair service centers close to Athletes’ Village as well as in selected training and competition venues. Experienced O&P professionals, wheelchair specialists, and welders John Snethen work together to ensure that equipment is repaired and maintained, regardless of athletes’ nationalities or the brands of their devices. This will be Snethen’s second time at the Paralympics; he also worked in the repair station in Rio de Janeiro five years ago. In 2019, he traveled to Lima, Peru, to work in the Ottobock repair station at the Parapan Games. A marathon runner himself, Snethen is looking forward to the challenges of assisting athletes in Tokyo. In Rio, “there were about 100 of us” working as technicians, he says. Because the games include Paralympians from all over the world—and not everyone speaks a common language—organizers “bring in a variety of people to assist,” explains Snethen. He recalls working alongside a gentleman that only spoke Spanish, “but we both understood what needed to be done for the patient, and we could communicate through work. It’s phenomenal to see a working group of people who all have one thing in common—and that’s to help these athletes.”
