Paralympic glory doesn’t come easily
For Canada’s rookies, the Rio Games have been a real learning experience
When four years of commitment can be undone in three lopsided minutes on a wheelchair basketball court, when an eyeblink separates a swimmer or a cyclist from the podium, when the point of an opponent’s sabre sends you home before you’re ready to go — that’s when you are reminded that the pinnacle of Paralympic sport, like any sport, is cruel and kind all in the same instant.
Just ask the Canadian women’s basketball team, half of which was reduced to tears on Tuesday after their medal hopes were dashed in a quarter-final loss to the Netherlands.
“I honestly do feel we left everything on the court,” said co-captain Janet McLachlan, whose upper lip was stiffer than most. “That’s a positive to take away from this — it’s actually I think the most important thing. If we had regrets, then we could hang our heads.
“To lose on a day to a better team, it happens in sport, and it’s why we play this — because if we just won all the time, it wouldn’t be as exciting, it wouldn’t be as interesting, it wouldn’t mean as much. Yes, it’s crushing today. We’ll shed a few tears, I think, and regroup for the next games.”
Neither of Canada’s wheelchair hoops teams still have hoop dreams. They are perennial podium stalwarts, so their unfortunate situation offers insight into the greater team picture. Yes, they are all happy to be here, all 162 athletes, their coaches and other team personnel. But most would be happier with more medals. Through Day 6, Team Canada has won 14 and is clinging to a top-16 spot in the table, which was their stated goal. They are light years behind China, which had 125 and counting early Tuesday, but so is every other country in the Games. Great Britain was closest, for lack of a better term, at 67.
“We tell our athletes all the time: at the Paralympics, you never know,” chef de mission Chantal Petitclerc said. “You’ve got some athletes in the dark, they get the support they need, they get their country around them, they make it onto the podium.”
A rebuilding Canadian team that shed some veteran medal winners after Beijing 2008 and again after London 2012 has fallen just short many times in Rio, and Petitclerc is not surprised. A whole new generation of Paralympians have to learn by doing, and it is sometimes a painful lesson.
“They go from not-so-big events to the biggest event on Earth, and they have to cope with that,” Petitclerc said. “This is a very unique skill we ask of our Paralympic athletes. In some sports, they can go for four years competing in front of 200 people and then we ask them to compete in front of 20,000 people. How do we train them for that when they don’t have the exposure?
“How do they succeed in doing that? For me, this is a puzzle. And when they succeed in doing it, it’s even more amazing.”
Canada’s few medal winners have celebrated and been celebrated, and should be properly feted at home, too. Everyone on that team, regardless of their result, should be proud of the accomplishment, the sacrifices made, the training hours spent laying the foundation.
The pictures of swimmer Aurelie Rivard, two gold medals and a silver now in hand, are alluring and ought to be admired. The bigger picture, one that incorporates funding and development, will be scrutinized by the Canadian Paralympic Committee and by Own The Podium, which provides funding for Canadian Olympic and Paralympic athletes and their sport bodies.
But that will wait until the emotion of the moment passes. They will crunch the numbers dispassionately and chart a funding path for the next quadrennial.
The current blend of public and private funding that supports training and athlete development worked better for Canada when it was among a much smaller number of countries that were serious about the Paralympics. China is spending gobs now, and so is Ukraine — at least, that’s the rumour.
Canada could spend more if it had more. Its core funding is guaranteed but the CPC is trying to drum up sponsorship cash and better results in Rio will help that fundraising initiative. OTP contributions, which amount to $6.652 million for 12 Paralympic sports during 2016-17, are directed to the most promising sports and athletes. OTP will not spend money on judo, fencing, table tennis, archery or wheelchair tennis, sports in which Canadians have competed at these Paralympics.
“I would say we have had a couple of disappointments, near podium finishes, near gold. I think it just shows the amount of preparation other countries are putting into this,” CPC president Gaetan Tardif said. “We know we’re in a rebuilding stage in a number of areas, so I am not going to say we’re disappointed. We’re pretty much on track.”
To lose on a day to a better team, it happens in sport … Yes, it’s crushing today. We’ll shed a few tears, I think, and regroup for the next games.