CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Andrew Kurka spent his childhood roaming the outdoors of rural Alaska at his family’s homestead near Nikolaevsk, with 600 acres at his fingertips, sleeping inside only because he had to. But it was always fishing that was the lure.

Even as a 5-year-old, the now 34-year-old para Alpine gold medalist was resolute.

In those early years, his mom, Amy Bleakney, joined Kurka on the edge of a river for hours and hours as he searched for that one fish he was trying to catch. While temperatures might have dipped and time dragged on, there was no stopping Kurka and his child-sized fishing pole.

“‘We can come back,’” Bleakney would try to tell her son. “‘The fish is still going to be here tomorrow.’ He’s like, ‘No, I got to get it.’”

Bleakney would sit in the truck and watch her son.

“We didn’t leave until he caught his fish,” Bleakney said.

Thirty years later, Kurka still feels the pull of the water and Alaska. It’s been his home and the place that holds the next chapter of his life as he plans to step back from ski racing following the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Paralympics. Shaped by the nature around him, he’ll be looking to help others find that sense of purpose with his next steps.

Just as he found his.

When Kurka was 13, he severely damaged three vertebrae in the middle of his spinal cord in an ATV accident. About three months after his accident, a family friend got him back in a boat and out on the water to go fishing. Kurka was in a back brace and still in excruciating pain, so the pair didn’t spend much time out. But that hour or so in the middle of nowhere was all Kurka needed.

“It was something that I wanted and something that I needed in my life, and he was able to help me get that, and then the moment that happens, he helped me set a new goal for myself: to be able to pursue being better,” Kurka said. “‘Hey, I want to do that, but on my own.’ You know?”

Two years later, he tried a different elevation of the outdoors — down the slopes on a mono-ski for the first time through a program called Challenge Alaska, thanks to the encouragement of his physical therapist. Kurka crashed at the bottom, going straight down.

Those who helped Kurka suggested he try turning on his next go-around. Instead, Kurka again went straight down.

“The moment that I slid down that mountain, the moment I felt that speed, I felt so alive,” Kurka said. “I remembered, ‘Hey, I can live. This is life. I can do things.’”

On a chairlift ride back up, his instructor predicted his future, telling him, “You’d be a pretty good racer. You don’t seem to be afraid.” Kurka learned about the Paralympics. For a lifelong athlete who wanted to go to the Olympics as a wrestler, the conversation renewed Kurka’s desire for “being the best.”

Kurka first qualified for the U.S. Paralympic team in 2014. But he didn’t compete after crashing in training. He made his Team USA debut in 2018, winning two medals (a gold in downhill and silver in super-G). He became the first-ever Alaskan Paralympic medalist. He is scheduled to compete this week in the super-G (Monday), combined (Tuesday) and giant slalom (Thursday).

But with Kurka, there’s always something else brewing. And he knew his athletic career could set up his future. Not long after Kurka won his gold medal, Kurka started chatting to his now wife, Verónica, after the two met online. Kurka couldn’t stop talking about the property he had just found, telling her it was perfect.

“I was like, ‘OK, what’s your favorite color or something?’” Verónica Kurka says now with a laugh. “But he really, really wanted to talk about this project.”

Always a dream of his, he used his earnings to buy property and build cabins, looking to set up a retirement plan for himself. By the time Verónica visited Alaska some time later, Kurka was already living in one of the cabins. But in the process, after the 2018 Games, he realized he wanted it to be something more than just a build-and-sell investment.

Soon after, some of his friends came up to visit. So did someone whom Kurka barely knew, but he invited him up to Alaska on a challenge anyway.

When Derek Demun posted a photo of a personal-best-sized halibut he caught in his home area of Southern California, Kurka saw it on a mutually followed Instagram account connecting impaired outdoorsmen in the United States. Not long after, Demun received a direct message from Kurka that read along the lines of, “Oh, that’s your personal best. Why don’t you come up to Alaska and beat it?”

Kurka told him about his wheelchair-accessible bed and breakfast, the Golden Standard, and his backstory as a para athlete. The two chatted on the phone, and Demun checked him out to make sure he was a real person. A week later, Demun had tickets to Alaska for a trip that summer of 2020 with his dad and friend. Kurka picked them up in Anchorage, and the adventure was on as they drove to the property near Palmer, about 45 miles from Anchorage.

They spent the days exploring the scenery and taking in the moose that would frequently appear as roadblocks. Evenings were spent around a firepit. And there were two fishing excursions on Kurka’s boat, when they headed out to open water, a nearly 2 1/2-hour trek.

“I have no idea where we’re at,” Demun said. “It’s raining, it’s cloudy. We’re rocking with the waves. I’m like, ‘Dude, we’re in Alaska. I’m fishing for halibut. I’m going to die out here. No one is going to know. I feel like I’m on a TV show.’

“But he held by his word. I was able to go and catch the biggest halibut I’ve ever caught in my life.”

Since that trip, Demun has gone back to Alaska nearly every summer. The adventures have continued with airplane tours — Kurka has a sport pilot license and a plane is next on his to-do list — Jet Ski rides up to glaciers and plenty more fishing.

“When people think of Alaska, they think of igloos and polar bears and lots and lots of snow and just unaccessible terrain,” Demun said. “And me and Andrew, we have a little saying, like, complacency kills and comfort kills.”

Derek Demun (pictured) took Andrew Kurka up on his offer to visit Alaska. “He held by his word,” Demun said. “I was able to go and catch the biggest halibut I’ve ever caught in my life.” (Courtesy of Derek Demun)

As the years have passed between visits, the number of cabins on the property has grown, and Kurka has found his purpose.

“There was that sense of peace, that sense of freedom and that sense of fun that they got on the ocean has stayed with them forever,” Kurka said. “Nature was what helped me to recover from my injury. You know that peacefulness that helped me to recover from my injury, and I want other people to experience that also to help them recover from their injury. And it’s really easy for me to provide that.”

It’s the time with family and building out his next plans for the Golden Standard that has Kurka looking forward to stepping back from ski racing. But Kurka won’t be slowing down. He’ll just be spending more time in Alaska compared with the extensive travel that comes with being on the circuit. There’s a bike-trail trip in Japan with Verónica in the works, and he wants to spend time forging knives. He’s working with a nonprofit mentoring young athletes. For the Golden Standard, he plans on getting his commercial pilot license to become a flight instructor for others with impairments, along with providing fly-in fishing and hunting trips.

But beyond the occasional trips out, he doesn’t want to turn fishing into an extended job, as the water remains a sacred place for him.

“From my childhood, there’s been that outdoor sense of nature that has grabbed ahold of me,” Kurka said. “For me, nature and adventure is true freedom, because you stop worrying about everything else in life that doesn’t really matter. And that’s the piece of me that finds peace, and that’s what I search for. And I find bits and pieces of that inner peace while I’m competing. Because when I’m on the course and when I’m pushing out of the start gate, nothing else matters but that next one minute and 30 seconds worth of life-changing moments and dangerous speeds.

“But nothing about it compares to when I’m on the ocean in Alaska. … That’s the piece of me that I love and the piece of me that will always be in Alaska.”