Growing up, John Ross-Duggan was the typical California golden boy.  Although he surfed competitively when young, he professes to never having been very good at it.  He began his sailing career at age seven when he participated in Alamitos Bay Yacht Club’s junior program.  With the savings from his first job as a paperboy, which was matched by his grandfather, he bought one of the earliest Hobie 14s and went racing.  By 1970 he had placed seventh in the Hobie Cat Nationals.  In 1977, while in his third year of medical school, he won the Hobie 16 National Championship. 

Eight months after winning that title he broke his neck in an auto accident.  He was 23 and paralyzed from the chest down.  Support from family and friends pushed him through six months of rehab and he returned to finish medical school and complete his residency.  Eighteen months post-accident he was back in graduate school and trying to get back into racing only to find out “how weight-sensitive small catamarans are.”  After a few frustrating years trying to find the right boat, Ross-Duggan started racing Freedom Independence 20s through Shake-a-Leg Miami.  Success in that boat led him to a campaign for the Paralympics. 

When sailing made its debut as an exhibition sport at the 1996 Paralympics it was  Ross-Duggan, with crew Chris Murphy and James Leatherman, who had won the right to represent the U.S.A.  Sixty sailors from 15 countries competed in that first Paralympic Regatta held on Lake Lanier using Sonars.  Ross-Duggan and crew won the bronze medal capping a year in which he also won the Independence Cup, North American Challenge Cup and the Hobie 16 Trapseat World Championship in Australia.  In recognition of his accomplishments US SAILING named Ross-Duggan the 1996 Male Athlete of the Year.

But there was unfinished business for Ross-Duggan.  His mother had died two weeks before the 1996 Paralympic Games and he felt he lost his focus and edge.  He wanted to do better than a bronze medal.  His hopes of representing the U.S.A. in Sydney went unrealized when, with both Murphy and Leatherman back on board, he finished 5-3-5-5-4-(5)-2 out of 11 boats to come fifth overall at the 2000 Paralympic Trials.  He would have to wait four more years for another chance to go to the Games. 

At the 2004 Paralympic Sailing Trials, with new teammates J.P. Creignou and Brad Johnson, the team was one point out of the lead halfway through the series.  They won four of the next six races to move into the lead on the penultimate day of racing.  With their win of the first race on the final day, Ross-Duggan and team had won the Paralympic Sailing Trials.  And although they didn’t need to, they elected to sail the final race of the series – as practice for their trip to Athens.