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Canadian swimmer Katarina Roxon has entire province behind her
"Even today I’ll get people just randomly calling me at home saying, ‘I just wanted to say I’m really proud of you’. It’s touching.”
Katarina Roxon is hoping to repeat as Paralympic champion in Tokyo in the 100m breaststroke SB8 propelled by more than the support of her family and friends to get back to the top of the podium.
Roxon is from the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, on Canada’s east coast. The friendly nature and hospitality of Newfoundlanders is world renowned. It was the subject of the hit Broadway Musical ‘Come From Away’ when Newfoundlanders opened their arms to thousands of passengers whose planes were diverted there after the terrorist attacks on 9/11.
Canadian wheelchair basketball star Cindy Ouellet aims for podium in Tokyo
Women’s team looking for first Paralympic medal since 2004
One of the stars of Canada’s women’s wheelchair basketball team is looking to achieve something in Tokyo that has alluded her despite a stellar career – winning a Paralympic medal.
31-year-old Cindy Ouellet grew up idolising some of the Canadian players who came before her.
From 1992 to 2000, Canada reigned supreme in women’s wheelchair basketball becoming the first and only country to win three straight Paralympic gold medals.
But Team Canada has been kept off the podium ever since winning a bronze medal in 2004.
The Resiliency Project: Lessons you can learn from the Pandemic
“You have life” to cherish even in the worst moments
Athlete was looking to make history for Grenada in Tokyo
With roosters crowing in the background, Ishona Charles is giving me a lesson about resiliency as she speaks to me on the phone from her home on the island of Grenada which is under 24-hour curfew right now to deal with Covid-19.
She knows she is fortunate. She’s healthy. But like me and many other people right now, Charles is trying to move forward after having her life turned upside down by the virus.
Charles expected to be in the final phase of training right now for this summer’s Paralympics in Tokyo. She would have made history by becoming the first athlete from Grenada to ever participate in the Paralympics.
“I was hoping to be Grenada’s first Para athlete and to win a medal and make a difference,” Charles says about the games which have now been rescheduled for August 2021.
The secret to Ukraine's Paralympic success
The result was the best yet for a country that since 1996 has moved up the medals table faster than any country in Paralympic history.
Valeriy Sushkevych helped orchestrate Ukraine's dramatic rise in Paralympic sport, fighting discrimination toward people with disabilities along the way.
When Sushkevych was a child, he contracted polio. At university, a Soviet official tried to block him from participating in swimming by telling him "disabled people don't do sport — they belong in hospitals."
King of Norway contacts teenage sensation after her stunning performances at World Championship
Eighteen-year-old Vilde Nilsen received a surprise after winning her second world title at the Prince George 2019 World Para Nordic Skiing Championships earlier this week highlighting her meteoric rise in the sport.
“Yeah when I got the two first golds the king actually sent me a message of congratulations,” Nilsen laughs.
That’s right King Harald V of Norway sent her a personal note after she became world champion in cross-country skiing in the women’s middle distance and sprint races.
Para Nordic stars nominated for prestigious award ahead of World Championship
One of the Paralympics’ top stars, Brian McKeever, will miss his first race at the World Para Nordic Skiing Championships in Prince George, Canada, this Saturday, but he has an excellent reason. The most decorated cross-country skier in Paralympic history will instead be in Monaco, where he is nominated at the Laureus Awards for Sportsperson of the Year with a Disability.
For the 39-year-old to be on stage with the biggest names in sport is “a career highlight”.
Lima 2019: Cycling best medicine for Perea
Alejandro Perea Arango will be busy at August’s Lima 2019 Parapan American Games in Peru, competing in three cycling events on the track and two on the road.
“My goal is to get to as high as possible on the podium and hopefully it will more than once,” Perea said.
“There is nothing more gratifying than if what you do from the time you awake to the time you go to bed is something you love"
The 22-year-old Colombian is one of cycling’s rising stars.
At the 2018 UCI Para Cycling Track World Championships in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, he seemed to come out of nowhere to win two gold medals.
Perea had never won a World Cup medal and was competing at his first World Championship.
Success is sweet revenge against bullying for Paralympic star Aurélie Rivard
Canadian swimmer opens up how bullies almost forced her to quit sports.
At the recent Canadian swimming trials in Toronto, 22-year-old Aurélie Rivard added three more gold medals to her already impressive collection.
The Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., native has high hopes for more at the Tokyo Paralympics in 2020. Rivard is looking to defend her three Paralympic titles and the world records she set at the 2016 Paralympics in Rio
Lima 2019: A trailblazer for sport and inclusion
Competing at the Lima 2019 Parapan American Games is not something 30-year-old Alejandra Aybar would have considered possible in her wildest dreams as a child.
She was born with a genetic or brittle bone disease called Osteogenesis Imperfecta that affects her balance. She’s broken her femur and hips so many times she’s lost count.
“I’m not sure if people have changed [how they view me] but what really has changed is me. I don’t care anymore if people look at me. I feel empowered.”
Aybar endured terrible pain and countless surgeries so for most of her life sport seemed out of the question.
Lima 2019: Vinicius Rodrigues aims for first big title
As good as 2018 was for Brazilian sprinter Vinicius Rodrigues, the next few months are when he’s really hoping to showcase his talent starting at the Lima 2019 Parapan American Games in August.
At the Sao Paulo Grand Prix event in April, the 24-year-old set a new world record in the men’s 100m T63, finishing in a lightning fast time of 11.95 seconds. He’s the only person in his class to break the 12 seconds mark, something he did for the first time last year.
Rodrigues thinks he can go even faster and doesn’t plan to stop there. His goal is to come away from his first Parapan Am Games with a gold medal around his neck.
Athletes call for reinstatement of wheelchair basketball players
The controversy surrounding one of the Paralympics most popular events continues to grow leading up to the Tokyo 2020 Games, now due to take place in August 2021.
A group of Paralympic athletes from around the world are calling on the International Paralympic Committee to “show compassion” and to reinstate players who have been ruled ineligible for the wheelchair basketball competition at the Tokyo Paralympics.
Global athletes from 10 of the 14 countries who have qualified for the Tokyo 2020 and now 2021 Paralympics wheelchair basketball tournament released a joint statement today calling for the immediate reinstatement of the players.
Tokyo 2020: Cyclist Pieter Du Preez targeting new milestone
Du Preez is hoping to win a medal in the men's handcycling H1, which is added to the Games for the first time ever.
South African athlete Pieter Du Preez has already made history a few times in his career and has made a habit of pushing through barriers some might find insurmountable.
Du Preez is now looking to complete another historic milestone next year at the Paralympics in Tokyo.
He shares more about the mark hopes to set there and also tells his powerful story of resilience and reinvention, so topical right now considering how people’s lives have been turned upside down by COVID-19 and other world events.
One-on-one with Minister Carla Qualtrough
Lessons learned from COVID-19
On June 2, 2020, Abilities was granted an exclusive Q and A with Carla Qualtrough, Federal Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion. Veteran journalist Teddy Katz had the opportunity to chat with Minister Qualtrough about lessons learned and the approach her government is taking during the crisis.
Stefan Daniel: Inspired by a little brotherly love in Tokyo
The driving force behind triathlon star’s quest for gold
When Stefan Daniel takes to the starting line in the PTS5 triathlon final in Tokyo next year, he’ll be looking to win gold for his brother Christian who has helped him achieve heights rarely seen before by a Para athlete.
“Tokyo will be one of his [Christian’s] first races where he will see me compete, so I’m hoping I can put on a good performance for him.”
Daniel had many good performances in 2019 when the 22-year-old went undefeated. Ever since he was a child, Daniel has never considered the fact that, missing a part of his right arm was a disability and he says, he has his brother to thank for.
Christian is four years older and has cerebral palsy. They started swimming together as kids.
Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic legacy continues 10 years later
Marielle Thompson was in grade 12 when the Vancouver 2010 Olympics began on Feb. 12, 2010 and as a Whistler resident she was off school and couldn’t get enough of the atmosphere. Thompson’s own Olympic dreams began when she saw Ashleigh McIvor, who was also from Whistler, win the very first gold medal for ski cross
“I grew up watching Ashleigh ski. I’ve known her my whole life and when someone from such a tiny little town like Whistler wins the Olympics on such a big stage, you’re like oh…maybe I could do that too.”
Q&A: Paralympics boss says Games can be a force for inclusion in divisive times
Andrew Parsons became the president of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) in 2017. In that time he was seen the Paralympic movement grow even more than the watershed event at the London 2012 Games.
With one year to go before the Tokyo Paralympics, Parson detailed an ambitious plan for the future to CBC Sports, including his stance on doping and playing a major role in human rights.
'The Michael Jordan of wheelchair basketball' has returned
At 39, Patrick Anderson’s comeback is all about getting Canada back on Paralympic podium.
Patrick Anderson dipsy doodles around the basketball court in his wheelchair during a recent friendly match against Japan at the Pan Am Centre in Scarborough, Ont. He dekes around opponents, changes speeds on a dime, shoots the ball from practically anywhere and hits nothing but net.
At The Canada Games, An Athlete is An Athlete. Period.
The closing ceremony for a sports event that some say is one of the most inclusive in the world will take place Saturday (March 2) in Red Deer, Alberta
The Canada Games has featured 3600 athletes, managers and coaches, participating in 19 sports over the past two weeks along with a major arts and cultural festival.
This Paralympian's story helped Tokyo land the 2020 Games
Mami Tani joined a group of athletes who brought supplies to aid tsunami victims in 2011
Mami Tani is training hard to qualify to compete in triathlon at the 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo.
The course for triathlon runs through the area where she works and where her son goes to nursery school so it would be extra special for her to compete there. But that's not the only reason.
Tani played a key role in bringing the Games to Tokyo. The 37-year-old felt the weight of the country on her shoulders in September of 2013 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Tani, then known as Sato before she was married, was more nervous than ever. She's spent a decade competing in front of thousands in the long jump at the Paralympics in Athens, Beijing and London. She's been a world champion.
But this was different.
Lima 2019: The Pied Piper of the Parapan
The captain of Peru’s sitting volleyball team Bruno Jose Quiros Davalos says it is almost as if people with impairments are coming out of the shadows in his country as a result of the Lima 2019 Parapan American Games.
“Here it’s always been a taboo to talk about people with physical disabilities,” he said. But he added: “Lima is finally changing.”
Quiros is playing a central role in that change.
Peru’s pioneers
“Until now there hasn’t been any real development in Para sport. Now with Lima 2019, we are the pioneers here. We are seeing more and more people doing Para sport,” said Quiros, who was recently chosen as torchbearer for the Pan American Relay.
Lima 2019: Tennis legend impressed by wheelchair tennis star
Gustavo Fernandez is enjoying the moment as one of the top wheelchair tennis players in the world. He knows how fleeting this time on the top can be.
That’s why the 25-year-old Argentine star is not getting too far ahead of himself.
After winning Wimbledon and before targeting a calendar year Grand Slam at the US Open, Fernandez wants to try to defend his title as the singles and doubles champion at the Lima 2019 Parapan American Games this August.
Two-time defending Parapan Am champion
“The Parapan Am Games is huge for the country and for me. I’ll try to do my best to repeat that,” he said. He’s been the Parapan champion since he won the singles title in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 2011.