Higher Powers

A decade later, Colorado Altitude Training calls some of the world’s top athletes as their clients, and they’ve even built the world’s largest altitude system (the Aspire Dome in Qatar). The Phoenix Suns, Olympic athletes such as Apolo Ohno and professional athletes such as Shaquille O’Neal have all trained with a Colorado Altitude Training system. Sheikh Mohammed of the United Arab Emirates hired Colorado Altitude Training to install systems in all the bedrooms in his two palaces as well as in several horse stables.

CAT has spread their technology from sea to shining sea and beyond. It’s more than athletic applications. There are numerous facets to the business: from helping billionaires with their altitude sickness to ensuring that the star spangled banner is safe from fire. Confused?

Kutt says the company has seen growth in using low-altitude systems in high elevations.

“We see these wealthy, successful, Fortune 500 businesspeople who buy $25 million vacation homes in towns like Aspen or Telluride or Squaw Valley, and then they get altitude sickness,” Kutt said. “That’s a problem.”

But never fear, billionaires of the world, Colorado Altitude Training can enter your new home and pump oxygen into your rooms, making you feel as though you are living at merely 2,000 feet above sea level.

“It’s enough that it minimizes the oxygen deprivation,” he said.

Kutt discovered another application for their technology one day when they were testing how fire reacted within one of their systems. In the room, he tried to light a match. It wouldn’t light. He tried a lighter; the flame went out. He lit a candle outside of the room and walked inside. The flame disappeared. Fire, they learned, extinguishes if there is less than 16 percent oxygen. So this spring, Kutt will fly to Washington, DC, to the Smithsonian, where he will use Colorado Altitude Training’s anti-fire technology to protect the museum’s centerpiece: the flag that flew when the British attacked Fort McHenry during the Revolutionary War…the flag that inspired the “Star Spangled Banner.”

It’s a world away from Colorado Altitude Training’s athletic applications—but it speaks to the powers of innovation that helped make CAT a pioneer in the industry. It seems that the modern endurance athlete has now come to rely upon altitude training, and CAT has come to rely on this fact.

“When we go to the Olympics, we are not just watching for fun. We are watching our clients,” Kutt said. “We know any number of the athletes participating. To be humble, these athletes are doing a lot of the right things to be at the top. But one of the right things they are doing is training at altitude.”