Olympic ski hero Jimmie Heuga blazes another trail: An active way

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Uphill Racer
Olympic ski hero Jimmie Heuga blazes
another trail: An active way to wellness for
fellow MS patients
By Frank Clancy
U
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Heuga today in his
sit-ski as a leader
in exercise therapy
advised people with MS to avoid exercise. There was logic to this advice,
since raising body temperature can
trigger MS symptoms.
For several years, however, Heuga
continued to exercise, albeit haphazardly. Meanwhile, MS took its toll. Literally and metaphorically, his world
shrank. He stopped skiing.
In the summer of 1976, Heuga
was living in a one-room cottage in
southern Connecticut, on Long
Island Sound. Once a superbly con-
ditioned world-class athlete, he
could barely jog, dragging one leg
behind him. “It was absurd,” he
recalls. “I could walk faster than I
could run. I was frustrated.”
He stopped exercising. Through
the windows of his cottage, he
watched people sail, water-ski, run,
play tennis. It was like watching others
live his life.
Reading a magazine, he stumbled
across an article that quoted the 17th
century French philosopher Blaise Pas-
JIM HEATH (SIT-SKIING); THE HEUGA CENTER (ALPINE SKIING)
ntil 42 years ago, no
American man had
ever won an Olympic
medal in downhill skiing. Then, suddenly and dramatically, two 20-yearolds accomplished that feat together:
Billy Kidd grabbing the silver and Jimmie Heuga the bronze in the slalom at
the 1964 Innsbruck Winter Olympics.
Four years later, on the eve of the next
Winter Olympics, that breakthrough
landed the inseparable friends on the
cover of Sports Illustrated.
But even then, their lives were
diverging in unexpected ways. While
the flamboyant Billy Kidd gained fame
and fortune as a professional racer,
Jimmie Heuga — described by Sports
Illustrated as “a constantly grinning
youngster” — would change how the
world views multiple sclerosis (MS).
Even before the 1968 Olympics,
Heuga had been experiencing intermittent but disturbing symptoms —
blurred vision, numbness, lethargy.
Two years later, just shy of his 27th
birthday, he learned he had MS.
At the time, physicians routinely
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Over the four
decades since
mastering the
toughest
slalom courses,
Heuga has
taught the
world how to
handle the
twists and
turns of MS.
Heuga in the ‘60s
as a leader on
Alpine ski slopes
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An Olympian Approach to MS
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Skiing was one of them. A filmmaker made a documentary about
the former Olympian’s return to the
slopes, which in turn led to speaking
engagements for MS groups around
the country.
Medical experts, including his
own neurologist, warned him that he
might exacerbate his disease, but logic
— and his body — told him something different. “They didn’t know
what causes MS,” he says, “so how
could they tell me that exercise, which
made me feel good and reinforced my
health, could be bad for my disease?
It seemed like a contradiction.”
H
euga vowed to teach
others the lesson he
had learned. In 1984,
he established the Heuga Center in
Vail, Colo., to help individuals with
MS learn the value of exercise.
It took him four months to recruit
24 people with MS for the center’s first
exercise program. “The room and
JERRY COOKE/SPORTS ILLUSTRATED; THE HEUGA CENTER
Billy Kidd and
Jimmie Heuga
remain as
close today
as they were
while gracing
magazine
covers and
Olympic
ski slopes.
cal as saying, “All men’s miseries derive
from not being able to sit in a quiet
room alone.” Somewhat paradoxically, Heuga heard the Frenchman telling
him to leave that room: Exercise. Be
active. It is better to die leading the life
you want than to live a provisional existence, a sort of half-life.
The next day, Heuga borrowed a
bicycle from his landlord, determined
to ride if he could not run. He got up
on the bike, fell, got up again, fell and
got up, fell and got up. He rode for
perhaps 45 minutes. “I’ll never forget
how fatigued I was,” he says. “I was
wiped out from the heat.”
But he was also exhilarated. “For
the 45 minutes I was out there, I had
been fully in charge of myself,” he
says. “I decided I was going to pursue
exercise and ride my bike from then
on. I went after it with a vengeance. I
got up every morning at six and rode
around the Sound. It was wonderful.”
“Little by little,” he adds, “I began
to get noticeably healthier and
stronger. And this affected my life —
I began to do more things.”
THE HEUGA CENTER
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board, everything, was free,” he
recalls. “I couldn’t give it away.”
“We didn’t know how to exercise
with MS,” says neurologist Randall
Schapiro, M.D., director of the
Schapiro Center for Multiple Sclerosis
at the Minneapolis Clinic of Neurology, who started working with the
Heuga Center in 1985. “Nobody actually knew how to take someone with
MS and show him or her how to exercise in such a way as to improve
instead of fatigue.”
And that included Jimmie Heuga.
The center’s first program, Dr.
Schapiro recalls, was at best clumsy, at
worst dangerous — designed by athletic trainers who were accustomed to
working with athletes. But humility
and a willingness to learn were among
Heuga’s strengths, and he engaged
others — including Dr. Schapiro — to
help him develop safe and effective
programs that teach participants how
important it is to avoid overheating,
how to monitor their pulse and
breathing to avoid exercising to the
point of exhaustion, how to adapt
exercises to accommodate physical
limitations, how to exercise safely
even when experiencing symptoms.
Two decades later, the Heuga Center offers individuals with MS and
their families a unique set of programs
designed to complement traditional
medical care and teach them to live
well despite limitations.
The center’s trademark “Can Do”
program is a like crash course in how
to live with MS. For five intense days,
25 patients (each with a companion)
work with virtually every type of
healthcare professional versed in MS
therapies — among them neurologists, cardiologists, urologists, nutritionists, physical therapists, psychologists and occupational therapists. Participants leave the $2,000 “Can Do”
program with an individually designed
exercise, diet and wellness regimen.
Science has caught up with Jimmie
Heuga. A landmark study, published
in 1996 and funded partially by the
Heuga Center, found that individuals with MS who exercised for 40
minutes three times a week fared
better on a variety of physiological
and psychological measures than
those who did not exercise. “Patients
with MS should be encouraged to
engage in regular aerobic exercise,”
the researchers wrote in the Annals of
Neurology. “Exercise training appears
to offset the typical difficulties of MS,
including excessive fatigue, depressive mood disorder, and low selfrated quality of life.” Other studies
have since confirmed those findings.
Regular exercise has been shown to
decrease MS symptoms of stiffness,
weakness and pain. And Heuga is
thankful that cold-air skiing as well
as cool-water swimming afford particularly viable exercise regimens
because they help keep body temperature down.
So even though his condition has
continued to worsen, even though
he has lived in an assisted-care facility since 1999, even though he now
uses a wheelchair, Heuga — at age
62 — remains active. He speaks to
participants in Heuga Center programs about 30 times a year. He
swims. He pedals a three-wheeled
cycle using his arms. He water-skis
sitting down. And he skis down
black-diamond (expert) slopes in a
sit-ski — essentially a plastic chair
on skis.
Seeing the toll MS has taken on
his body, he says, others sometimes
misunderstand his views. “I never
said I was going to beat MS,” he
points out. “To this day, they haven’t
found a cure, or the cause.”
He describes exercise as an “emotional anchor” that keeps him
grounded in the world. As such, he
says, it helps to maintain his sense of
self, his sanity. And it keeps his heart,
muscles and lungs healthy —
despite MS. “I’ve always drawn a distinction,” he says, “between my condition and my health.”
He has learned to live quietly in
the room that is multiple sclerosis.
“If I had listened to [conventional
medical advice], I would have been
done at this point,” Heuga says. “I
NN
would be dead.”
Frank Clancy is a medical writer
whose articles have appeared in
American Health, Consumer Reports
on Health and Health magazine.
The Heuga
Center’s wellness programs,
expanding
on its founder’s
groundbreaking
approach
to exercise
therapy for MS,
are infused with
Jimmie Heuga’s
“Can Do” spirit.
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