Amy Van Dyken has never been one to avoid a challenge. As a toddler she suffered from severe asthma and couldn’t walk up and down the stairs of her suburban Denver childhood home without gasping for air. When she was just 6, she started swimming to strengthen her lungs and eventually went on to become an Olympic champion in 1996 — the first American woman to win four gold medals in a single Olympic Games.

“You can do absolutely anything you want with asthma,” says Van Dyken, who had won six Olympic gold medals by the time she retired in 2000.

In 2014, that same perseverance helped her survive a terrifying, near-fatal ATV accident that left her paralyzed from the waist down.

“I’ve never been one to give up; I can’t say, ‘Poor me,’ ” says Van Dyken, who has since built a successful sport

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