Dolfo sprinting to success
PARALYMPICS AIM: Visually impaired Langley senior already a record breaker
Braedon Dolfo has never worried about the 95-per-cent vision he doesn’t have.
Instead, the Langley Secondary senior is using the five per cent he does have — along with a huge heart — to charge head-on toward a potential spot on the Canadian team that will compete in the 2012 Paralympic Games later this summer in London.
After that, despite his visual impairment, Dolfo is set to begin his university career in the fall as a member of the able-bodied track-and-field team at his hometown Trinity Western University in Langley.
“I would describe [my vision] as looking through a straw,” said Dolfo, who will test his best against the rest of the Canada West conference next season. “There is no peripheral vision. It’s all just dead centre.
“But my parents never held me back from anything. I started out by trying everything from gymnastics to soccer to my first love, which is basketball. But I just decided that track was the easiest because it was just me and the track. It was a sport where I didn’t have a ball flying at my face all the time.”
Working with Langley Mustangs coach Kim Chapdelaine brought out the best in Dolfo.
He’s been training with the Canadian Para-athletic program since 2009, and is currently the Canadian record holder in his visual impairment category (T13) in the long jump (6.40 metres), high jump (1.83 metres) and 100 metres (11.34 seconds), the latter of which would have ranked him fifth in Canada among able-bodied junior athletes. “He will be a very strong 4 x 200 relay runner for us, and I honestly believe that he has a sub-11-second 100-metre run in him this year,” said Trinity Western’s head coach Laurier Primeau.
Dolfo has experienced huge success on the international stage and he’s seen the world in the process.
His Canadian record in the high jump gave him a bronze medal in the 2011 Paralympic World Championships in New Zealand, where he also ran the anchor leg of Canada’s fourth-place finish in the 4 x 200 relay.
At the 2011 Para-pan Am Games in Mexico, he won the bronze medal in the 100 metres.
But maybe the biggest thrill yet comes this week, as Dolfo and the rest of the Canadian sprint relay team leave for London to run a test meet at the sparkling new 80,000seat Olympic Stadium, as Games officials conduct a dry run of their timing and call systems and security procedures.
“I just enjoy the thrill of going into an environment like that,” said Dolfo, who has dropped his jumping events for the time being to concentrate on hitting the sprint times he is confident he can achieve to earn his qualification to London.
“I thrive on stuff like that. Truthfully, it’s not intimidating at all. I have dreamt about having the opportunity to run in a big stadium and I want to live it out.”
And it’s not hard to see how much Dolfo loves his sport.
“When I saw where my talent could take me in track, it’s just kind of given me wings,” Dolfo said. “So far, it’s gone well.”