Canada's Paralympic team aiming for top-five finish in Beijing 2008

By Mary Beth Walker

The 143 athletes – 80 men and 63 women – named Tuesday to the Canadian team heading to the Beijing 2008 Summer Paralympic Games this September are aiming to propel Canada to a top-five finish.

The team is a solid blend of medal-bearing vets, including swimmer Benoit Huot, and determined new faces, such as rower Steve Daniel. Huot recently broke the world record that he set seven years ago in the 200m backstroke, and Daniel, a retired soldier, was introduced to sport for the physically disabled at the inaugural Soldier On Paralympic Sport Summit in May 2007.

Canada’s women’s goalball team and men’s wheelchair basketball team are vying for their third-straight gold medal.

For Paralympian Shauna Marie Whyte, who has competed as a Nordic sit skier at the last two Paralympic Winter Games and makes her Summer Games debut in hand cycling, Beijing is about athletic excellence.

“These are true athletes,” Whyte said of Paralympians. “These are athletes who train not just for the extrinsic value of sport – for the money, for the sponsors – but they train because they love their sport.”

Canada will compete in 17 sports: archery, athletics, wheelchair basketball, boccia, cycling, equestrian, fencing, goalball, judo, powerlifting, rowing, wheelchair rugby, sailing, shooting, swimming, table tennis and wheelchair tennis.

The athletes will be supported by eight guides and 120 coaches, medical staff and other support team members.

The Canadian team of 143 athletes going to Beijing is the same size as the team Canada sent to the last Paralympic Summer Games in Athens in 2004. Canada finished third in Athens, and third also in Sydney in 2000.

CPC President Carla Qualtrough noted though that with more countries competing and competition intensifying, winning medals is becoming harder.

About 4,000 athletes from 145 countries are expected to participate in the Beijing Paralympic Games. The number of countries participating at the Summer Paralympic Games was 136 in Athens and 125 in Sydney.

Wheelchair racer Chantal Petitclerc noted the growth of the Paralympic Movement worldwide has also resulted in increased awareness of Paralympic sport and Paralympic athletes.

“This will be my fifth and last Paralympic Games. Things have changed a lot over the 20 years I’ve been training. Back then, one out of every two days when I was training, people would stop their cars at the side of the road and ask me if I needed to be pushed up the hill outside my hometown of Saint-Marc-des-Carrières. They didn’t know that I wanted to climb the hill on my own,” recalled Petitclerc. “That doesn’t happen anymore. I was on the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve [in Montreal] this morning, and after my performance over the weekend, I had six or seven cyclists who stopped to congratulate me on my world record. That shows that things have changed enormously in 20 years, and that Paralympic sport has taken the place it merits and that we’re recognized as athletes first.”

The Canadian team was announced by the Canadian Paralympic Committee at media conferences held simultaneously on July 8 in Vancouver, BC and Montreal, QC.

“I am forecasting a stellar performance by Canada’s Paralympic athletes at the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Summer Games in China,” said the team’s Assistant Chef de Mission, Gaeten Tardif.

Whyte added, “Life is a lot bigger than the podium. It is also about inspiring other people. Excellence isn’t just about the podium. It’s about our everydayness.”

To view the list of the full 2008 Canadian Paralympic Team heading to Beijing this September, visit the Canadian Paralympic Committee’s website at www.paralympic.ca.