A person with a disability who is not portrayed as a victim, but as a hero, and with physical strength, it’s life-changing.
— Stephanie Dixon, three-time a paralympian. Scott Stinson on the paralymics,
In the early part of last year, I met about a dozen Paralympians at a Toronto conference hall, part of the media buildup to what was then still planned to be Tokyo 2020.
Stephanie Dixon, a threetime Paralympian herself and now the chef de mission for the Canadian team in Japan, explained that the toughest thing about the job was the stuff that she could not control.
“We could have a typhoon for example,” she said, in what now seems like an extremely quaint problem to have. Instead, a pandemic arrived mere weeks later, and Tokyo 2020 became 2020 in name only. Concerns about the weather were replaced with worries about a virus and testing protocols and travel challenges and all the other difficulties associated with a pandemic Paralympics.
But few people in the world are more familiar with overcoming obstacles than Paralympians. The Canadian team includes those like Katarina Roxon, the 28-yearold from the tiny town of Kippens, N.L., who was born missing her left arm below the elbow but will now compete in her fourth Paralympics, having won a gold medal in the pool at Rio 2016, but also those who were able-bodied at birth and suffered an accident later in life. Tara Llanes, 44, was a professional mountain biker for 15 years before damaging her spine in a 2007 crash. She didn’t take up wheelchair basketball until nine years later, but soon played her way onto the Canadian team, which booked a spot in Tokyo by winning the 2019 Parapan-am Games in Lima, Peru. Nate Riech is the son of an Olympic javelin thrower and a Commonwealth Games pole vaulter, but when he was 10 years old he was struck in the head by a golf ball, causing a brain injury that affected the right side of his body. The 26-yearold, who now lives in Victoria, also holds the world record for the 1,500 metres in his class and is now one of Canada’s best medal hopefuls in Tokyo.
Overcoming challenges, in other words, is kind of their thing.
Dixon, who was born without her right leg and hip, swam in her first Paralympics when she was still a teenager, in Sydney 2000. She notes that the human body deals with disabilities in its own way — in her case, she developed a stronger core simply because it was required to sit comfortably on a chair. “My leg, when I competed, was the size of a tree trunk,” she says, which probably helps explain her 19 Paralympic medals. Dixon says that attitudes about the Paralympics, and Paralympians, have shifted considerably since her first competitive days. Sydney was the first time that the Olympics and Paralympics were run by the same organizing committee, but even then they didn’t make much of an impact back home. But attention on them has grown, and Tokyo will mark the first time that the Paralympics will have prime-time television coverage in Canada (the CBC will broadcast three shows daily, beginning with the Opening Ceremony on Tuesday).
“To know that we’re going to be showcasing our Paralympic athletes on primetime television, and that young kids will see diversity, and potentially someone who looks like them,” is huge, she says. “A person with a disability who is not portrayed as a victim, but as a hero, and with physical strength, it’s life-changing,” Dixon says.
The chef de mission also says the changes aren’t just about broadcast schedules and media exposure, but the way in which Paralympians are talked about. Instead of a someone who is “missing” a leg, they can be celebrated as a one-legged athlete who is among the best in the world at her sport. “It’s about owning the difference,” she says.
Canada certainly treats its Paralympic programs like elite sport. It competes for government funding just like Olympic programs do, and there is a similar demand for return on investment. Results matter, and only those who provide them can maintain their spots with the national program. When the men’s wheelchair basketball team competed in Peru in 2019, they needed a topthree finish to guarantee a spot in Tokyo. Bo Hedges, the captain, said he knew that if they didn’t accomplish that, “some people would be losing their jobs.” (The team made in the final in Lima, booking that Paralympic ticket.)
But as much as there is the stress and pressure of elite sport, there is also the undeniable fact that the Paralympics can provide a different type of inspiration. For someone with a disability, seeing someone like them reach a podium can be immeasurable. It can be, as Dixon said, life-changing.
“There’s no price you can put on the impact of the Paralympic Games,” she says.