Starting the Impossible in PyeongChang

Last year Toyota announced it would become the Worldwide Mobility Partner of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, building its first-ever global corporate initiative around the games. That partnership fully takes shape Feb. 9, when the Winter Olympic Games begin in PyeongChang, South Korea.

 

And that initiative? It’s called “Start Your Impossible,” and it tells you exactly why Toyota and the Olympics and Paralympics are such a perfect match.

“’Start Your Impossible’ has become something of a mission statement for me personally because I hate being told something ‘can’t be done,’” says Toyota Motor Corporation President Akio Toyoda. “It’s why I decided to train to become a master driver at Nürburgring at the ripe old age of 51, because I knew it would help me make our cars better even though many people told me I was crazy, including my father!”
 
With that in mind, are you going to tell six-time Paralympian Alana Nichols that she can’t achieve her goals? Paralyzed from the waist down in a snowboarding accident when she was 17, Nichols became the first American woman to medal in both the summer (wheelchair basketball) and winter (alpine skiing) games. She’s back in 2018, looking to cap her career off with one more medal.
 
And what about Chloe Kim, the only athlete in X Games history to win three gold medals before her 16th birthday? She is also the first woman to ever nail back-to-back 1080s in competition. Now 17, Kim is seeking to expand her legend in PyeongChang. She knows nothing but possibilities.
 
And then there’s Ted Ligety. Even though the two-time gold medalist downhill skier is competing in his fourth Olympics, it’s the first for him as a father. Ligety isn’t about to show his son, Jax, a world with limits.  
 
For these athletes – and the rest that make up our team of Olympians and Paralympians – impossible simply isn’t a thing.
 
As for Toyota, impossible was never a thing. Take a look at Romy Camargo, a decorated U.S. war veteran whose combat wounds left him paralyzed from the neck down. Last year, Camargo completed the first North American in-home trial of Toyota’s Human Support Robot. As a result, Camargo’s impossible just got a little smaller. Opening doors and getting a bottle of water are no longer daunting tasks.
 
Through the Olympics and Paralympics, Toyota is challenging team members, dealers and customers to “Start Your Impossible” because, as we’ve learned from Camargo, along with Nichols, Kim, Ligety and the other Toyota Team USA athletes, impossible doesn’t exist.