Paralympian Malik Jones lets the tape come off

The first time Malik Jones picked up a sled hockey stick, trainers taped it to his right hand. Born without shinbones and with three fingers on each hand, he didn’t yet have the grip strength to slide up and down the stick the way elite players do. He remembers the workaround and what came next: “As I progressed and really wanted to make sled hockey my career, I realized that to play at a high level, I needed to slide my hand up and down the stick, use both hands,” Jones told NBC Sports “So I went to work in the gym… forearm workouts, grip workouts.”

That same cause-and-effect—adaptation, then acceleration—has defined Jones since his grandmother signed him up for sled hockey at seven. “Her encouragement for me to do more sports also encouraged me because I’m an athlete at heart,” hesaid. “I joined when I was seven,and ever since then, I never looked back.” Football was his favorite sport to watch because his brother played it; hockey felt familiar for the physicality, “a lot of hitting, a lot of jukes and stuff like that.”

Colorado gave him a front row seat to what professionalism looks like. As a kid, he watched U.S. standout Nikko Landeros come through practices. “Just watching him—the professionalism he had when he did play and also how hard he worked,” Jones said. “Seeing how hard he worked on the ice inspired me to… keep working hard and eventually get to that level.” The lesson was simple and sticky: the standard lives in the details you repeat when nobody is watching.

Representation gave him something else: a mirror. Meeting Tim Jones, the first Black sled hockey player on Team USA, put his own path in context. “Meeting him for the first time and hearing about what he went through, it was an eye-opener,” Malik said. “Seeing someone like me—disabled, African American—gave me motivation to want to make the team. He gave me pointers and tips… to get better and to represent my ethnicity.”

By 21, Malik Jones had sled hockey gold from the Beijing Olympics and medals from back-to-back world championships. The hardware matters, but the visibility issues matter just as much. “It gave me pride that younger kids… can look at me and see that they can achieve whatever they set their mind to,” Jones said. “Being that leader means a lot. I take pride in representing my ethnicity and showing kids that whatever you go through, whatever you look like, it shouldn’t stop you from chasing your dreams.”

After Beijing, Jones went home to Aurora, Colorado, and spoke in his old high school gym—another loop closed.

“Standing there in that gym… it felt good to represent where I came from,” he said. Teachers told their current students whathehad done since graduating. Jones soaked it in. “It was special to get that kind of recognition.”

Off the ice, he invites people into his sport — literally. He helped narrate a VR segment for the NHL’s United by Hockey Museum, letting fans step into his sled and see the game through his eyes. “That project was really fun,” Jones said. “It gave an inside look at what I go through as a disabled person and as a Paralympic hockey player… in the gym, on the ice. I think fans got the story they wanted and needed.”

On the ice, the workremains specific and unglamorous: more strength in the right hand, greater awareness, increased efficiency in his movements, and more time spent with the national team. “Personally, I want to keep developing things in my game that I feel need work,” he said. “My right hand will always be a work in progress…[so will] being more efficient on the ice and in the gym. ”The teampiece is just as urgent. “I can’t wait to get around the boys and just develop that real deep bond… and go for gold.”

Jones knows what it means to watch older athletes set a standard in front of him. He also knows what it means to be the one setting it now.

“As a kid, I didn’t really think maybe I could do it,” he said. “But seeing guys like Tim Jones and Nikko Landeros make it in this sport opened my eyes.”

The message he wants younger Black athletes with disabilities to hear is the same one that powers his own routines. “There’s a quote I love: ‘Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.’ If you have the work ethic, it doesn’t matter if you’re not the most talented — work ethic will prevail in the end. Keep going, persevere, and believe in yourself.”

Ask him what his disability has given him, and he doesn’t hesitate.

“It’s built me into a very resilient person who perseveres through adversity. I wouldn’t trade that.” Sled hockey brought him friendships he expects to keep long after he’s done playing, and the sport gave shape to the toughness he had already learned to carry. “

I’m super grateful… being disabled in general was able to bring me those things and shape me into this person that’s super resilient and can face any type of adversity in life.”

From taped hands to the national crest, the throughline is consistent. Find thelimitation. Build the workaround. Keep going until the workaround becomes the skill. Jones doesn’t romanticize thatprocess; he just lives it — at home in Aurora, in a VR headset, in a cold rink with teammates he can’t wait to see again. The next season will ask its usual questions about chemistry and execution. He already has the answer he gives to everyone else, and to himself every day: show up, put in the work, and let the tape come off.

Throughout the winter, in a series called Hometown Hopefuls, NBC is spotlighting the stories of Olympic and Paralympic athletes from across the United States as they work towards the opportunity to represent their country at the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics. We’ll learn about their paths to their sports’ biggest stage, the communities that have been formative along the way, and the causes they’re committed to in their hometowns and around the world. Visit nbcsports.com/hometown-hopefuls for more stories on the road to Milan Cortina.