'Athletes are ready to swim faster': Canadian swimmers set for a busy 10 days on the Paralympic stage
A Canadian team full of stars looks to repeat previous successes.
The Para swimming events at the the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games begin on Thursday, kicking off a busy ten days of competition that will feature 141 medal events.
Canada is sending a team of 22 athletes, 7 men and 15 women, that features an exciting blend of Paralympic veterans and youngsters that make up the newest generation of swimmers. Six of those 22 are Paralympic medallists, led by superstar Aurélie Rivard, who has won ten medals in her Paralympic career, including five (two of them gold) at Tokyo 2020.
Danielle Dorris and Katarina Roxon are the other two Paralympic champions on the team, while Tess Routliffe, Sabrina Duchesne and Nicolas-Guy Turbide return after previously winning medals. Ten swimmers will be making their Paralympic debuts, including 16-year-old Reid Maxwell, the youngest member of the entire Team Canada delegation in Paris — who will turn 17 during the Paralympics. Many members of the team have won medals on other world stages including the Parapan Am Games and world championships.
That long list of accolades is impressive, and of course the team has ambitions to add to it in Paris, but the team has adopted an approach that focuses less on medals and more on ensuring good performances. They believe that if they prepare the right way, they will swim to the best of their ability, and if they swim to the best of their ability the medals could follow.
"For us, what is really important is focusing on what we can control,” said national team head coach Martin Gringas, who also praised the professionalism of his athletes during their staging camp in Vichy before heading to Paris, in a virtual press conference this week. “The first goal is swimming a best time, or improving your ranking. It's going to be the focus for us as management and we wish to see the athletes, based on the ranking, to move up and and also try to do some best times.
“I think this is going to help us to reach the goal that we have on paper right now, because also it's not to put pressure on swimmers in terms of number of medals. We are here to win medals for sure, one hundred per cent, but this is going to happen because the athletes are ready to swim faster.”
As she heads to her fourth Paralympic Games, Rivard has developed that perspective as well over the past few years, focusing more on herself and swimming to the best of her abilities rather than worrying about what her opponents are doing.
“I have to beat myself,” Rivard said during the press conference. “I think I'm my biggest rival in all of this, and it's been a different preparation. It's a different mentality to head to a Games being the one being chased, as opposed to chasing a new ranking or new medals. That's something that the pandemic taught me a lot, is to focus on myself and what I can control. I'm focusing on details every day, in the pool, outside of the pool, that will end up hopefully making a bigger difference at the end.
“I am a racer. I'm also passionate about what I do. So at the end of the day, I'm just going to show up and do the best that I can and race the other girls, try to stay ahead as much as possible, and I know what I have to do. I know these events very well, and I honestly learned as much as possible to let go of the outcome and just really focus on the process and the preparation and really focus on my time. So if I can be as close as possible to my world records, or break them, then technically the medals should follow.”
Rivard will have a busy schedule in Paris, set to compete in several individual events throughout the Paralympics, as well as likely being selected for the relay team. As she eluded to, she holds world records in several events, including the 100 and 400-metre freestyle races in which she is the twice-reigning Paralympic champion in the S10 classification.
Staying fit for such a strenuous week of racing, both physically and mentally, is a challenge, but as Rivard gets set for her fourth Paralympics, she has become one of the veteran leaders and captains of the team. With that comes knowledge and experience in how to manage the Paralympic schedule, which she can pass on to her teammates.
“To stay focused and on top of your game for 10 days straight is extremely hard,” Rivard shared. “Of course, I try to work on that and I try to race three weekends in a row during the year and try to get myself in a worse condition just to prepare for it.
“I try to break it off into several little meets in my head… I really just try to focus on what I can control, on what's ahead of me now. So if I have 100 free to do, I'm focusing on that 100 free, and the rest is out of my control. It works out well here, because my racing schedule is really spread out in the 10 days, so I can kind of break it off in three meets and then adjust my preparation based on that. It's a mental challenge, really.”
The most experienced swimmer on Team Canada is Katarina Roxon, who will be the first Canadian woman to swim at five Paralympic Games when she dives into the pool in Paris.
The Rio 2016 Paralympic champion moved to Quebec City ahead of these Paris 2024 Games, to help her be nearer to fellow Para swimmers pushing for the same goals as her, including living with Rivard. She also wanted a bit of a fresh start after considering retirement post-Tokyo 2020.
On Tuesday, she was one of Canada's flag bearers for the opening ceremony alongside wheelchair basketball player Patrick Anderson.
“I've definitely seen a huge difference from my first Games to now,” said Roxon. “Going into my first Games, I had no idea what Paralympics was, so now to have so many other people, especially young kids, know what it is and be excited about that, we've definitely seen a big change, and I think we're definitely improving. I think there's still so much more to improve and so much more to come in the next few years, so it's really exciting.
“I've been doing this a long time, and I think one of the biggest parts why I still keep doing it is the people that I'm surrounded by. I love the people I'm surrounded by, I've met so many of my best friends through this sport, so it's a great environment. Things are always changing, we have a lot of new staff this year, and it's great to see and get new perspectives on things. I think our team is a really, really strong team this year, so I'm excited to see what our swim team does this year at the Games.”
The Paralympic team are also taking inspiration from the Canadian Olympic team, who had one of its best performances ever in the pool in Paris. The two teams have some crossover during training as well as at the national swim trials, which are a mixed competition to select athletes for both teams for major meets like these.
The two sets of coaches also communicate, and the Olympic coaches were able to pass along tips and information from their time in Paris earlier in the summer — like the fact that the buses to the venues may not have air conditioning, and that they need to try the viral chocolate muffins in the village.
“I wish there was more but from my personal experience, there is,” said Rivard when asked if there is interaction between the Olympic and Paralympic teams. “I know a lot of girls on the Olympic team, we train together, we competed together, we were all at one point on the same team for Commonwealth Games with them, so that's where we mostly got to know them.
“I think I personally was cheering on the Olympic team as hard as if I was there, and I'm sure they're excited for us as well. It'd be nice to be able to see them more often, but ever since trials have been combined to meet, we've gotten to know them better and work with them.”
Canadian Olympians won eight medals in Paris — the same number of medals that the nation won in Para swimming at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. Rivard, Roxon, and the rest of this high-powered Canadian team have the potential to match, or potentially exceed, that figure this time around.
It all gets underway on Thursday.
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