Kelowna skier captures 2 medals at Paralympics
Emily Young’s journey to become one of the world’s best Paralympic cross-country skiers and biathletes is far from the usual one. Born in North Vancouver, she was an exceptional athlete at Carson Graham Secondary and was well on her way to becoming an Olympic wrestler.
Unfortunately a fluky training accident while preparing for the 2009 Canada Summer Games caused a severe injury to her right arm, and even after many surgeries, doctors have not been able to repair the damage.
She is a very tough and resilient person, though, and continued to wrestle even though her right arm was practically useless.
Amazingly, Young won a bronze medal at that Summer Games, wrestling with one arm!
Eventually she had to admit that her wrestling days were over, and she threw herself into cycling and triathlons, even managing to compete and win her age class in the Penticton Ironman. The arm injury continued to worsen, though, and she soon realized that she could not be competitive swimming and cycling with one arm.
Her whole world changed one day in 2015 when Young came to the attention of Jake Weaver, the ski coach at the Hollyburn Cross Country Ski Club.
She skied in her first cross-country race at Whistler in November of that year using only one arm (she skis with her right arm strapped to her body). The race was only her second day on skis! She is deservedly proud that she didn’t come last, but as Young says, she was a long ways from first!
It was obvious to onlookers that she had incredible potential, and Young competed in her first world championship only three months after skiing for the first time.
Since then, Young has risen rapidly in the world rankings. Before the Paralympics, she was the fourth-ranked Paralympic female skier.
Young tells me that her training regimen consists of 800 hours of training per year. I have no doubt that because of her work ethic and mental attitude, she will soon be challenging for the win in every race she is in.
At PyeongChang, Young won two Paralympic medals.
Her first, a bronze, came in the standing 7.5-kilometre race, in which Young finished only two seconds behind the winner — her Canadian teammate Natalie Wilkie — and just a tenth of a second behind the silver medallist.
In her next event, Young teamed up with Wilkie and fellow Canadians Chris Klebl and Mark Arendz to win a silver medal in the 4-x-2.5 mixed relay.
Kelowna can claim responsibility for much of the great success that Young had at the Paralympics in South Korea.
Her husband, an engineer, accepted a job in Kelowna and they moved here in 2015.
During the next two years, Young spent many hours training at Telemark Nordic with coach Adam Elliot, interspersed with multiple trips to North Vancouver to train with her coach there.
It won’t be long before Young moves to Kelowna permanently. Her husband starts a new job in Kelowna in September, and they are presently working on the plans for a home they will be building in the Mission area.