Chris Waddell: One Revolution
OMTimes: What do you think made you so successful there?
Chris Waddell: My success came from a willingness to work harder than my competition and from my knowledge of skiing. Having been a pretty good racer before my accident, I felt like I had an advantage because I knew what I was trying to do.
OMTimes: Where did the idea for the film 1 Revolution come from? What was your intention in making it?
Chris Waddell: The idea to climb Kilimanjaro popped into my head one day as I was riding on the trails by my house. They say that your subconscious is smarter than you are. That day it was definitely the case. I’d never considered climbing a mountain. I didn’t know if it was possible. I didn’t know if anyone had tried it, but I knew that I still wanted to make an impression.
When I competed the picture of me going 70 miles an hour on one ski didn’t fit with the picture of me in a wheelchair. I liked that. I enjoyed stretching people’s imaginations and forcing them to doubt the assumptions that they’d made about me. Climbing Kilimanjaro would be an opportunity to continue those efforts, though with a potentially bigger platform as a result of making the movie and managing our own pr. Creating that bigger voice for change was the real motivation.
OMTimes: Can you tell us about the bicycle/hand-cycle that you used?
Chris Waddell: It’s like a Mars Rover married to arm pedal power. Thanks to hinge in the frame each of the four wheels can articulate independently up to fourteen inches, giving it a rock crawler look. The wheels that we used were designed for riding bikes on the snow. They were four inches wide. Handcycle means that I pedaled with my hands. The drive train was all bike technology. We used regular front and rear derailleures, though also had two chains so we could achieve a lower gear for climbing by reducing the gear with the second chain (I can explain that more).
