By Tim McManus
A Survivor Story
Chad Crittenden lost a foot to cancer but almost took away a million dollars on the hit show Survivor. Now he uses his story to help others win the ultimate prize — freedom to achieve their goals.
Chad Crittenden doesn’t lie about it. He tried out for the hit television show Survivor because of the million dollar prize. But a close second, he said, was the chance to shatter everyone’s misconceptions about amputees.
Well, Crittenden didn’t come back from the Pacific Island Vanuatu with the million dollars, though he came tantalizingly close. But on the second count, Crittenden keeps piling up the winnings.
After confounding expectations by dominating in the show’s physical events despite having lost his right foot to cancer, Crittenden now takes his story on the road to universities across the county as an inspirational speaker for CAMPUSPEAK.
This summer Crittenden will add a new chapter to that speech when he competes in BMX riding at the O&P Extremity Games, a 3-day extreme amateur sporting event for people living with limb loss and limb difference at the Orlando Watersports Complex. Other competitions include skateboarding, rock climbing and wakeboarding.
No matter how well Crittenden does — and he is in it to win — it will be hard to match his dramatic first act on Survivor. Crittenden and the other contestants were dropped onto the island and divided into two tribes, one male and one female. As their first mission, the tribes had to trek many miles over rugged terrain and then build a campsite from scratch. A daunting task for anyone, let alone a man with only one natural foot.
But Crittenden forged ahead of the pack during the hike, then did more than his fair share of hauling the material needed to build the camp. The whole time, Crittenden wore long, tear-away pants that hid the fact he was an amputee.
The guy with the fake foot
That night, with the camp finally built and Crittenden established as a physical leader of the tribe, he unzipped the leg of his pants with a flourish and revealed his prosthesis. The men of the tribe gave audible gasps, and the dramatic reveal became one of Survivor’s most memorable moments.
“I wanted to break all of their preconceived notions about what an amputee could do,” Crittenden said. “I didn’t want to show any weakness or I knew I would be voted off. After what I did the first couple of days I knew they would look at me just like anyone else.”
Not everyone was convinced immediately. Brady Finta, one of the tribe members who would become Crittenden’s close friend, went on camera that night and said only half-kidding, “Great, Chad’s a nice guy and smart, but now we’ve got a guy with a fake foot on our team.”
It didn’t take long to win over any doubters. Crittenden formed an alliance with four other tribal members, who coincidentally were the older guys in the tribe. Crittenden, now 36, and the others routinely did as well or better in the challenges than their younger comrades.
One challenge that stands out to Crittenden involved a sprint into the woods. Though Crittenden had been training daily for the rigors of isolated life on the island and had even finished a triathlon just 9 months after his amputation, he didn’t do much running in the buildup to the show because of the higher risk of injury to him and his prosthesis. But when the gun sounded, Crittenden took off in a full run for the first time in months.
“I felt so free. I knew I could handle anything,” Crittenden said.
Learning “guerilla prosthetics”
One of the things Crittenden had to learn was how to take care of his prosthesis, a Venture Sprint foot. The producers of the show would only allow Crittenden to take one foot to the island. Before going, Crittenden met with a prosthetist every week to tweak his device for the various rigors. He had to learn what he calls “guerilla prosthetics,” or how to repair the foot on the fly if it was injured on the show. He also had to continually adjust the device as he lost weight and his residual limb shrunk.
Crittenden was forced to put guerilla prosthetics to use when the cap on the valve that helped maintain good suction between the foot and the socket broke off. Crittenden rolled up some leaves and twigs and stuffed them in to hold the seal. The fix worked. For the remaining 27 days Crittenden was on the island, the foot held up perfectly. In fact Crittenden’s prosthesis works so well, he is sometimes embarrassed when people point to him as overcoming a major obstacle.
“That is what people don’t understand,” Crittenden said. “They look at the foot as a major disability. But I rarely have pain. I can do almost everything I could do before. To me it is more like a minor inconvenience that I have to live with every day.”
Crittenden’s athletic prowess — he has completed several on- and off-road triathlons — and his experience as a teenager riding BMX courses makes him a favorite to take the $5,000 prize.
But even if Crittenden does not win, the sight of him on the bike will keep smashing expectations and give him another story to wow his college audiences.
“I tell them, as far as limitations go,” Crittenden said, “there are none.”
Tim McManus is a correspondent for O&P Business News.
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