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About the KBF — Why We're Riding For The Kelly Brush Foundation

When Kelly Brush was paralyzed in a ski racing accident, she took what she learned from her own injury and launched a foundation that aims to help guide others from injury to independence.

Sometimes, our lives are marked by one significant moment, a turning point where there is life before and life after. For Kelly Brush, that moment was February 18, 2006, the second day of a collegiate ski race where she was a promising young contender. Brush, then a sophomore at Vermont’s Middlebury College and an elite ski racer, was thrown off the course by a patch of ice and crashed into an unpadded lift tower, suffering a severe spinal cord injury that left her paralyzed from the chest down.

While she was in recovery, her teammates fundraised enough money to buy her a monoski, a seated single-ski that enables those with spinal cord injuries to ski. She spent months in rehab, but she was back on the slopes on her monoski the following winter. “When I got hurt, I was a huge athlete. I thought I was never going to be active again,” Brush says. “When I learned that wasn’t true, and I was able to be active again for the first time, it allowed me to be myself again.”

The barriers to getting into adaptive sports—especially when you’re still recovering from a major life-altering injury—are many. “You’re figuring out how to get your clothes on and get out of bed in the morning. Your priority isn’t going skiing or biking,” Brush says. “A lot of people don’t realize that’s even an option, or they don’t have the resources to get into adaptive sports, which are really expensive.” Brush says one of the biggest barriers to entry for adaptive sports is the belief that it’s not possible.

So, as she was going through this herself, while still a college student, mind you, she and her family decided to launch the Kelly Brush Foundation, a Vermont-based nonprofit organization that now works nationwide to help make active lifestyles possible for those with spinal cord injuries. They offer grants and other resources to help people buy equipment and find adaptive sports centers, they host camps to connect people with peers, and they support ski racing safety through padding and netting, bleed kits, and safety education and advocacy around the country.

“I was really lucky that I had a hugely supportive network that came out of the woodwork to support me after my injury,” Brush says. “I wanted to harness that support and do something good with it.”

Ever since the very first fundraiser of Brush’s teammates, the Kelly Brush Ride has been the KBF’s largest annual event. This year, the KBF will be hosting its classic ride in Vermont on September 9 and a new addition in California’s Bay Area this August 19. The organization also offers a virtual ride option that sees hundreds of participants every year.

Join Team Flylow here and ride virtually with us, whether you log miles on dirt, gravel or the road, or make a gift to our team here. If you register to ride with us, use code RIDEFLYLOW for $30 off your registration and select “NA/Undecided/Virtual” for your route selection. Help us reach our team goal of 1,000 collective miles ridden by setting a personal goal and connecting your Strava. Just click on “Fitness Goal” on your dashboard page once you register to get started. Every dollar Flylow raises goes directly to the Kelly Brush Foundation’s effort. This year’s goal at the Kelly Brush Ride is $1.2 million, which will provide enough funds to give 350 people with spinal cord injuries the adaptive sports equipment they need to be independent in sports again.

Here at Flylow, we support organizations like the Kelly Brush Foundation because we believe that everyone deserves a chance to explore the outdoors, and that we’re all better for it when we get out there and own our own time. Think about how much more peaceful the world would be if everyone got to go for a mountain bike ride through the woods every day?

These days, Brush, who works as a nurse practitioner as well as her involvement with the Kelly Brush Foundation, can be found out riding her full-suspension three-wheeled mountain bike with her husband and two young daughters in the summertime or downhill skiing at Sugarbush or Nordic skiing in the winter. More than most, she understands the benefits of getting outside with her friends and family. “What I’m able to do is what we’re hoping to enable lots of people to be able to do. There are so many ways to adapt,” she says.