Episode 9: Christian Bagg

 
Christian Bagg

“Immediately it dawned on me that I was going to be 100 percent reliant on technology in some way, shape, or form.”

Christian Bagg
Blazing New Trails

Christian Bagg has a fearless appetite for outdoor sports. As an avid adventurer, he thrives on adrenaline-pumping feats. But in 1996, a snowboarding accident in his native Calgary left him paralyzed at the age of 20. “I’ve experienced loss for sure,” says Christian, “but maybe not in a conventional way. I’m super pragmatic.”

Refusing to let his loss of mobility dictate the boundaries of his life, Christian channeled his experience as a machinist into creating a revolutionary bike that would get him back to the great outdoors. His relentless pursuit of innovation led to the birth of Bowhead Corp, a company that stands at the forefront of adaptive sports technology. 

Its flagship product, the Bowhead Reach, features an electric engine and an articulating axle. Scroll through Bowhead’s Instagram feed, and you’ll see footage of paraplegic athletes competing at dizzying speeds across the most treacherous terrain. Many of these videos include Christian himself. 

He says, “When a boy with cerebral palsy sees these amazing athletes blowing minds with their bikes, it gives hope and a sense of community.”

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Transcript

(Edited slightly for clarity)

Melissa Ceria: Christian Bagg, welcome.

Christian Bagg: Thank you for having me. 

Melissa Ceria: Christian, this spring you took part in the Fernie Gravel Grind in the Canadian Rockies. It's a race that's open to all cyclists, but you entered it on your Bowhead race bike and covered about 100 km in over three hours and 20 minutes, and you came seventh overall. Can you briefly describe the challenges of that course?

Christian Bagg: So, it's a gravel race which has gained huge popularity in the cycling community because road cycling has the obvious danger of cars flying by you. And so, gravel has turned into this safe place for cycling. Really. And because of that, there are many, many, many races popping up. So it's actually pretty awesome. And being that it's so new, there's not a lot of rules surrounding it, which works really well with my personality. So you can just enter. There's no, no one's like, well, what kind of bike do you have? What do you, like, let's stop and go over the rules behind this. It's like, yeah, just, just enter. So it's a very welcoming community. You pick the distance you want to do. I picked the long one, and there’s generally, they design these courses with lots and lots of climbing involved. And off you go.


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