Connor Poggetto isn't your average wakeboarder. Connor was born with Hereditary Spastic Paraparesis, a disease which limits his leg mobility. Determined to not let this setback slow him down, Connor has five World Championship titles under his belt and no plans of slowing down. We had a chance to talk to Connor and learned a bit about him and his future plans.
 
WW: You are a two-time World Champion for wakeboarding and one time for waterskiing. Which do you prefer, wake or waterski?
CP: For me waterskiing has always come first, but it is also what I started with. Wakeboarding is definitely more fun because there are less rules and you get to go bigger. It is also way more fun to ride behind this type of boat.
 
WW: How did you actually get into wakeboarding?
CP: Well, I learned how to waterski when I was six years old and my mom worked for Disabled Sports at the time. After going through the whole waterskiing process I saw that adaptive wakeboarding was a thing and it helped push disabled watersports as a whole. Ever since then I have been wakeboarding.
 
WW: If one wanted to get into adaptive wake how would they go about it?
CP: Contact me and we will get you hooked up with all the equipment you need and all the coaching. You will actually have the best coaches in the world and have use of the best equipment in the world as well.
 
WW: How do we get into contact with you?
CP: You get to me through any of my social media; Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.
 
WW: Which do you enjoy more, competing, freeriding or coaching?
CP: Ah, that’s a hard one. It all depends on what event I am doing. For wakeboarding it is all freeriding. For waterskiing, I love competing. For coaching, I love coaching it all. Coaching is one of those things that gives back the love for the sport. After those long days and your body is aching, you want to be able to coach the kids to remember why you have those long days and travel so much.
 
WW: How do you prepare yourself for a contest?
CP: For a contest it is all a little bit different. For wakeboarding, I like to just go out on the boat and get some time behind it. For waterskiing I have to make sure everything is perfect. If I am not in the right mindset, I don’t believe that I will do well at all.
 
WW: When you are not on the water, where can we find you?
CP: When I am not on the water I play in a coed softball league, relax up at our house in Tahoe or just hang out with friends.
 
WW: Besides wakeboarding or waterskiing, what other sports are you into?
CP: Snow skiing has been a really big part of my family ever since I was young. I actually started snow skiing before waterskiing and was actually training for Sochi, Russia. All I wanted to do was become a professional snow skier and then frostbite came about, and after frostbite I said I can’t do this anymore and waterskiing became the new sport.
 
WW: So you prefer the heat over the cold?
CP: Most definitely.
 
WW: Can you tell us a bit about your disability?
CP: I have a rare disability called Hereditary Spastic Paraparesis. This means my brain does not connect with my muscles from my mid-thigh down, so I am slowly becoming paralyzed. It can happen at any second. Like right now I can move my legs a little bit but in three seconds that might not be the case.
 
WW: What motivates you to overcome this disability?
CP: It is not necessarily an overcoming thing since I have had it all my life. It is just the different ways to deal with it. Since I have had it my whole life, this is how all of my friends know me as. It is not like I got into a car accident and my life completely changed. My friends made the rule that whoever sits shotgun has to put my chair in the car. So I don’t really care, as long as my chair gets in the car we are good.
 
WW: Do you have any advice for others that are disabled that want to get into something like adaptive wakeboard?
CP: Just go for it. If you think about it for too long and get nervous about it, that’s completely normal. Everyone is going to be nervous about it, but if you actually do it then you will realize that this is actually fun, let’s do this some more, I want to keep doing it and then take it to the next level and, hopefully, one day represent your country at the World Championships.
 
WW: So you just got a new 2016 G23. How does that feel?
CP: This thing is insane. It’s the best boat in the world for a reason. No complaints at all. Absolutely insane.
 
WW: Do you have any goals for the future?
CP: For waterskiing, I want to set a new world record for trick and a new world record for jump. My goal is to go 100 feet in jump. The person who came up with the entire concept of disabled waterskiing’s lifelong dream is to see someone go 100 feet, so hopefully I will be able to do that. When I was younger, I was too small for all of the cages that he designed, so he actually built me a special cage so I am pretty excited to hopefully be able to do that.
 
WW: Who was that?
CP: That’s Royce Andes. He snapped his neck barefoot waterskiing after getting whipped up onto shore.
 
WW: Ouch!
CP: Yeah, it was pretty rough. He is now a full quad and moves his chair using movements of his neck and his head.
 
WW: Who are some of the others in your sport that you respect the most?
CP: Matt Overholtz, who is a multi-time coach of the year and current world record holder. He is actually my personal coach and a coach of the US team.
 
Bill Bowness, who is a multi-time champion and a multi-time world record holder and he actually happens to be one of my coaches as well. Those are the two that I look up to the most.
 
WW: Do you have anyone else that you would like to thank?
CP: Nautique Boats, Hyperlite Wakeboards, Lake Dwellers Clothing. Hopefully in the near future we can see what we can do with Hyperlite, as well as Nautique, and see how far we can take this sport.
 
WW: Are you looking to get a pro model soon?
CP: I don’t know. That’s a question for Greg Nelson. Hopefully. The new boards that they shipped out this last week are absolutely insane. They fit the specs for waterski and are the best boards in the world. They have a reigning World Championship title right now and hopefully we can change that to a World record in August.
 
WW: Anything else you want to say?
CP: I would like to thank my mom for being there since day one always sitting in the hospitals post-surgery for weeks at a time. She has always been that person who has been there when I needed someone most, so thank you Mom.