Kitchener's Tyler Miller is on the wheelchair basketball team chasing a third Paralympic gold. Record photo
WATERLOO REGION — Now it’s their turn.
More than 4,200 Paralympians from 165 nations have gathered in London
for the largest-ever Paralympics, a global showcase of the best
disabled athletes in the world.
What started shortly after the Second World War as a competition to
rehabilitate those injured has turned into the largest sporting event of
its kind. The 12-day competition, which kicks off on Wednesday, has
smashed ticket sales records, with more than two million passes already
sold.
Canada, which finished seventh four years ago in Beijing with 50
medals, including 19 gold, is sending 145 athletes to London to compete
in 15 sports, ranging from wheelchair basketball to blind judo.
Here’s a look at the local athletes who will be competing.
LEAH ROBINSON
A funny thing happens when Mannheim’s Leah Robinson bursts out of the blocks and starts sprinting down the track.
For a few moments, her cerebral palsy seems to disappear, and she’s
just running — and fast, too. Fast enough to earn her way to a spot on
the starting line at the London 2012 Paralympic Games.
On Robinson’s left side, she’s fully able-bodied. But on her right
side, her muscles are weaker and shorter, causing a slight limp when she
walks and making it difficult to pick up small objects.
Robinson taught herself how to run with her disability as a little
girl by following behind her father Chris, trying to imitate his foot
strikes and rhythm. Something about running allows her to temporarily
suspend a condition she’s lived with her whole life.
“It disappears when I run. It’s something I don’t feel, or notice,
since I’ve had it since birth,” she said. “When I run, it’s just gone.”
At 18, Robinson already has one Paralympics under her belt. Four
years ago in Beijing, she ran a personal best in the 100-metre sprint
for runners with cerebral palsy, finishing 11th and just missing out on
the final.
Only 14 years old at the time, she was the youngest athlete on the
Canadian Paralympic team, falling just three-tenths of a second short of
a chance at the podium. She also finished 10th in the 200-metre race.
The Rockway Mennonite Collegiate grad has since moved to Ottawa,
where she’s been training full time for London at the Terry Fox Athletic
Facility. Working with her coach, she has been improving her ability to
finish strong in her 400-metre races, the distance that will be her
focus in London.
“People who watch my 400s always know that I start off quick, and by
the last 100, I’m crawling to the finish line. That’s the biggest thing
we’re working on,” she said. “I die hard, and I’ve been told it’s
painful to watch.”
Robinson goes into London ranked third in the world in the 400
metres, but making the podium won’t be easy. She expects the top
Paralympic runners to run the race in 67 seconds, notably faster than
her personal best time of 70.81 seconds.
Robinson, who plans to study nursing after the Paralympics, picked up
running at about four or five from her father. By age eight, she’d
already run her first five kilometre road race. At 11, she was
introduced to para-athletics when someone noticed her telltale limp at a
school sports banquet.
She made the national Paralympic team in 2008 and became the Canadian
record holder in the 100-metre, 400-metre, 800-metre and 1,500-metre
races. Earlier this year, she broke her own Canadian record in the 400
metres while qualifying for London.
Robinson’s training is designed to make sure her best races are ahead
of her. Her goal in London is to break the streak of fifth-place
finishes she’s racked up at international meets around the world.
“For London, the plan is to be peaking. We’re headed in the right
direction, but I still have a ways to go,” she said. “I’m tired of
fifth-place finishes. The podium is well within my reach and that’s what
I’m after.”
JUSTIN KARN
Thirty-one-year-old judoist Justin Karn said he wanted to be “crazy
scary” when he arrived in London for the Paralympic Games. After
narrowly missing the cut off for the 2008 Paralympics, the
Kitchener-based judoka is going to London with something to prove.
“This is a dream for me. This is something I’ve been dreaming about
for the last two decades,” he said. “It feels very exciting and very
nervous.”
Karn has been competing in judo since he was 13, but he stepped up
his training about a dozen years ago and started working hard to make
the Paralympic team. That goal has escaped him until now.
Karn, a coach and trainer at the Asahi Judo Club in Kitchener, was
born with aniridia, an eye condition that left him without irises and
makes it difficult for him to perceive depth.
But that hasn’t stopped the Guelph-born, Fergus-raised athlete from
thriving in a sport he was introduced to as student at the W. Ross
MacDonald School for the Blind in Brantford. An active athlete, he also
competed in wrestling, goalball and cross-country running.
In high school, he dreamed he’d represent Canada at the Paralympics — but in swimming, not judo.
The rules for Karn’s event are the same as for Olympic judo, except
that visually impaired athletes start each match already in a grip with
each other. The referee can also offer audible clues when an athlete
approaches the out-of-bounds area.
Ranked 11th in the world in the 60-kilogram division, Karn took
bronze at the Parapan American Games in Guadalajara last fall. The year
before, in Florida, he was named the Parapan American champion.
Karn hopes to eventually start a program to teach judo to disabled kids.
KATIE HARNOCK
Katie Harnock will be a woman on a mission when she hits the
wheelchair basketball court in London. She’s got one thing on her mind —
taking home a medal.
“I want a medal pretty badly, I’m not shy about saying that,” she
said. “It’s the only one I don’t have, a Paralympic medal, and I’m going
there to get one.”
It’s the last big goal for the Kitchener-born, Elmira-raised veteran
of the women’s wheelchair basketball team. She’s already earned gold and
bronze hardware at the world championships and helped Canada take
silver at the Parapan American Games in Guadalajara last fall.
Harnock, 29, was born with spina bifida, a birth defect affecting her
spinal cord. She first tried wheelchair basketball in her driveway at
age 10. She played her first game at 13, getting clotheslined in the
face at that match in an introduction to the sport’s physical side.
By 16, she was playing competitively in Kitchener with the Twin City Spinners.
In London, Harnock and the rest of her teammates are trying to redeem
themselves after their gold-medal aspirations in Beijing ended with a
fifth-place finish, despite entering those Games with a world No. 1
ranking. This time around, the team is ranked No. 3 in the world.
The St. David Catholic Secondary School grad is on scholarship to the
University of Alabama, where she plays for the university team and
studies English. On the court, she’s a slick-shooting and
smooth-dribbling point guard, while off it, she writes detective stories
she hopes to one day publish.
TYLER MILLER
Kitchener’s Tyler Miller had always been an active athlete; a skilled
golfer, skier, baseball and soccer player. But a workplace accident in
2007 at age 23 left him a paraplegic, taking those sports away from him
and sending him into a deep depression.
Through a friend, he found wheelchair basketball and a new passion.
Miller, injured five years ago when a steel rack fell on him at
Conestoga Cold Storage, is making his Paralympic debut next week.
The 28-year-old Grand River Collegiate grad is with the men’s team
that is chasing a third Paralympic gold and fourth consecutive podium
finish, after back-to-back gold medals in 2000 and 2004 and a silver
medal in 2008.
Miller, now a licensed tool and die maker, started playing wheelchair
basketball with the Twin City Spinners. He was soon noticed by the
provincial and national teams, winning a bronze and two silver medals at
the Canadian National Championships for Ontario.
Last fall, Miller helped Team Canada bring home a bronze medal at the
Parapan American Games in Guadalajara, Mexico. He earned a full-time
roster spot on the national squad this year, and will be expected to add
some energy into a veteran-led team.
MICHAEL HEATH
Michael Heath has waited a long time for his shot at the Paralympics. A dozen years, in fact.
The London 2012 Paralympics are the first Paralympics since 2000 to
allow swimmers with intellectual disabilities to compete in the pool.
That means Heath, who trains with New Hamburg’s Wilmot Aquatic ACES,
will finally get his chance to compete against the world’s best
para-athletes.
The 23-year-old will compete in a category specifically for athletes
with an IQ less than 70 points, after the Paralympics reinstated the
event by using intellectual tests designed to weed out cheaters.
“Mike kind of missed out because of his age. When it was taken out,
he was on the brink. For the past 12 years, he’s had to sit back and
watch everybody else make the team,” said his coach, Joni
Maerten-Sanders.
“This is the top of the podium. This is where he’s wanted to be … To him, this has been forever, just to get to this point.”
Heath will compete in three sprint events in London — the 100-metre
breaststroke, backstroke and freestyle. The breaststroke is his
strength, after hauling in a fifth-place finish at the world
championships in 2010 and a bronze at the Pan Pacific Para-Swimming
Championships earlier this summer.
“The way he’s training, and if he keeps his head focused, he could on the medal podium for that event,” his coach said.
Heath has been swimming since he was eight years old in the Ingersoll
area, but joined the Wilmot club about two years ago. He grew up
watching his older sister Brooke, who has raced at two Olympic trials.
Heath, an avid fisherman, has been training hard to get to this
point, with daily sessions in the pool, plus dry-land training twice a
week. Add in visits to a nutritionist, massage therapist and a sports
psychologist, and he’s been one very busy young man.
TIM REES
As Stagardt disease stole Timothy Rees’ eyesight, he simply readjusted his life.
By the time doctors declared the 32-year-old legally blind eight
years ago, he’d already given up his driver’s licence and said goodbye
to whitewater kayaking. That stung enough.
But instead of quitting school, he earned an undergraduate degree in
engineering and physics, then a master’s degree, then a PhD in applied
mathematics at the University of Waterloo, specializing in wave
interactions.
Instead of quitting judo, a sport he’d trained in since 1999, he
began competing in vision-impaired tournaments. His ultimate goal was
competing in the Paralympics — something he’ll do next week in London.
Rees, who was president of the UW Ballroom Dance Club despite his
blindness, is already one of the best vision-impaired judokas in the
world.
He won bronze at the Guadalajara 2011 Parapan American Games, in the
under 100-kilogram division, and finished fifth at the world
championships last year.
Rees, now a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Victoria, is aiming for gold in London.
BRANDON WAGNER
Twelve years after a tragic traffic accident left him in a
wheelchair, Kitchener-born Brandon Wagner is going to his first
Paralympics.
Wagner, 29, was in a Jeep en route to a party in 2000 when the
vehicle hit another car and crashed into a tree, killing two high school
classmates.
A coach of the Burlington Vipers dragged him reluctantly into wheelchair basketball, and he fell instantly in love with it.
“Wheelchair basketball has meant a ton to me,” Wagner recently told
The Hamilton Spectator. “Since I started playing, it’s been a big part
of my life. I’ve met friends from all over the world on my travels.”
Wagner rapidly climbed through the ranks of wheelchair basketball. By
2005, he made the under-23 men’s national team and earned a spot on the
University of Illinois squad, winning a collegiate championship in
2008.
Although this will be Wagner’s first Paralympic Games, he was part of
the Canadian team that won silver at the 2007 Parapan American Games in
Rio de Janeiro and bronze in 2011 in Guadalajara, Mexico.
PATRICK ANDERSON
Fergus’s Patrick Anderson is heading to London looking for
redemption. Long one of the premier wheelchair basketball players in the
world, the big, veteran player delayed retirement after the Beijing
Games to try one last time for another Paralympic gold.
Anderson led Canada to back-to-back gold medals in 2000 and 2004, but
the No. 1-ranked team had to settle for silver four years ago. It’s
been hard to swallow.
“Beijing was more disappointing maybe in hindsight than at the time,
somehow,” Anderson told the Guelph Mercury. “It’s always disappointing
when you feel like you don’t live up to your potential. I wouldn’t call
us a favourite going into this thing, but our potential is to win, so
yes, we have gold on our minds.”
Edmonton-born, Fergus-raised Anderson lost both his legs above the
knee at age nine after being hit by a drunk driver. One year later, he
discovered wheelchair basketball.
His size and speed quickly made him a standout player on the court,
and he became one of the game’s dominant forces. He led the Canadian
junior team to back-to-back world championships in 1997 and 2001, and
three world championship medals with the senior team.
Anderson is now working toward a general music degree at Hunter College in New York City.
JOSH CASSIDY
It has been a quite a year for Guelph’s Josh Cassidy.
In April, the 27-year-old wheelchair racer won the Boston Marathon,
setting a new record in the process and eclipsing the old mark of
1:18:27 set by Ernst van Dyk of South Africa in 2004.
Less than a week later, he placed eighth at the London Marathon,
famously crossing the finish line backwards to show off a T-shirt for
Niamh Curry, a five-year-old London girl who has neuroblastoma — the
same kind of cancer he had as a child that left his legs paralyzed.
Last month, he swept his three events at the Canadian Paralympic Track and Field Trials.
Now, the Canadian record holder in the 1,500-metre, 5,000-metre and
marathon events is poised for his second Paralympics. He’s hoping to
improve upon his performance in Beijing, where he placed fourth in his
heat in the 5,000 metres, and took a 10th-place finish overall.
Cassidy, the oldest of 10 children, still trains three times a week
at a gym in Guelph’s south end and on local streets. He has pushed
himself into the best shape of his life. He’s looking for nothing less
than gold in London.
