Joshua Olson

Joshua Olson is an American shooter and Paralympic athlete.

Early life and Olympics
Josh Olson was born in Spokane, Washington in 1979. Became a paralympian after losing his leg in Iraq War in 2003 to a rocket-propelled grenade. He was inspired by Vincent Hancock and Jamie Gray both of whom won gold in the past. Olson qualified for the London Paralympic Games in January 2012. He was an IPC Approved Competition for the United States as both silver and gold medalist in both R3 and R6. In 2009 Oceania Games and Hessian Trophy brought him two silver medals as well and the same year he was awarded with two gold medals again for the French Grand Prix and Alicante Cup respectively. In December 2011 both him and Eric Hollen were nominated to the Paralympic shooting team.

Prosthesis development
Besides winning medals he was responsible for helping develop prosthesis, that he said, helped a lot of wounded soldiers. He mentions that in late 2004, when he went to Orlando, Florida, he met a gentleman there who worked for Prosthetics and Associates with whom they drew a design on a piece of napkin. As soon as he came back to Walter Reed Army Medical Center the officials liked the new prosthesis on him so much that they started sending all of the wounded soldiers to Florida.

In June 2005, he was assigned to be a marksman at Fort Benning where he was practicing his shotgun shooting. He said that in his first tryout outside he hit 49 out of 50.