Jalbert aiming for national gold
Asnowstorm that brought winds gusting to 120 kilometres per hour hit St. John’s, Nfld., Thursday, and that forced organizers of the Canadian boccia championships to cancel today’s team and pairs events.
The good news for two-time Paralympian Paul Jalbert of Prince George is the singles event will go ahead as scheduled Saturday and Sunday.
The 55-year-old Jalbert was picked as the captain of Team B.C. and with the team events now scuttled he won’t have a chance to try to improve on the silver-medal team finish he helped his home province reel in at the most recent nationals in 2016 in Montreal.
But don’t be surprised if Jalbert wins some individual hardware at the Canadian Cerebral Palsy Sports Association-sponsored event.
“I have a good chance of winning the whole thing,” he said. “If I play my game a lot of them will have a tough time beating me. The last one I went to I won the training camp and I was one game away from making it through the round robin and I blew it (and finished second). I couldn’t hit anything in the last game.
“Two of the main competitors in my category retired about two months ago, so now it’s wideopen. Quebec has a two really good players and Newfoundland has one really good player who beats everybody but when it comes to playing me, he hasn’t beaten me.”
Jalbert was born with cerebral palsy, a movement disorder which affects muscle tone and co-ordination. Boccia players are classed based their levels of disability. Jalbert uses a chair to assist with his balance when he releases the ball. He’s able to throw with his hand unaided and competes in the BC2 class. Players in the more disabled classes are allowed to use their hands or feet. They can have an assistant to stabilize them while throwing, or can use a ramp to aim and release the ball.
Boccia is similar to lawn bowling and is played individually, or on teams of two or three, with each player throwing six leather-covered balls in a four-end game. The game starts with one player throwing a white ball known as a jack, and with the next shot that same player tries to place one of their coloured balls as close to the jack as possible. The opposing player then shoots until one of their balls ends up closest to the jack. Then it’s the other side’s turn to try and get closer or knock the opponent’s ball out of the way. When all balls have been thrown, the referee awards a point for each ball that’s closer to the jack than that of the opponent.
Jalbert has a long history as a competitive athlete. He’d been a swim racer for four years in his 20s when he branched off to road cycling full-time in 1989. That began an illustrious career which led him to the Paralympic Games in 1992 in Barcelona and 2004 in Athens. He represented Canada several times at the World Cerebral Palsy Games.
His athleticism and dedication to training strengthened his muscles and improved his coordination enough to allow him to race a two-wheeled bike through much of his cycling career. His balance issues and the challenges of racing on two wheels eventually led to a switch to three-wheeled trike, which he used in the Athens Games.
In 2005, he was the flag-bearer for Canada at the World CP Games in Connecticut and he wrapped up his 20-year racing career with a silver medal in the road race. He first started playing boccia in 2010 and that year won his first SportAbility provincial championship.
Jalbert works part-time at CN Centre as a maintenance worker and he and his wife Heather have a six-year-old daughter, Audrey. For the past two years he’s trained at the Northern Sport Centre gym at UNBC with coach François Loignon of Engage Sport North.
In August, Jalbert developed a blood clot in his chest and that left him with just five weeks of practice time to prepare for nationals.
“It’s taken a lot to get back, my energy isn’t what it used to be,” he said. “It’s harder when you’re older to do stuff. I’m not young anymore.”
Boccia has been a Paralympic sport since 1984. Jalbert knows more athletes are involved in boccia than there were when he was at the peak of his cycling career and the odds of making it to another Paralympics do not favour him.
“When I competed in cycling I never got any carding (national team funding), which made it hard to continue and I’m starting to see the same thing with boccia,” he said. “If I do really well at this one they shouldn’t have a problem picking me for the national team. But the only thing, for travel to get the competition, it’s all back east. I hardly have any competition in B.C. or Alberta and it’s hard to stick around if nobody’s going to challenge you.
“I think this one will tell if I’m capable of continuing.”