By Dan Plouffe Call it another coup for the capital. For years, Ottawa’s top triathletes have had to move away to find optimal training, but now, on the heels of the Regional Training Centre launch a year ago at the University of Ottawa, the country’s first National Paratriathlon Academy will also be coming to town at Carleton University.
“There are a lot of triathletes in Ottawa,” notes Jennifer Hopkins, an ITU paratriathlon world champion in the Les Autres category who has multiple sclerosis. “Having the camp here is certainly recognition of that.”
A major challenge for the sport at the moment is simply that there aren’t that many people involved in paratriathlon – which will make its debut at the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games – so the initiative aims to provide a boost to help build base at grassroots level.
“It’s not intended to replace community triathlon clubs or regional high-performance centres,” emphasizes Triathlon Canada operations director Larry McMahon. “It’s to augment their efforts and help them integrate paratriathletes.”
As many triathletes know, training for their sport can be a bit of a lonely venture. And if you happen to be a full-time lawyer on top of that like Hopkins, the individual nature of your pursuit becomes that much more present.
“It can be tricky to juggle, but I try my best,” says the 31-year-old who runs with the OAC women’s team and swims at the Club aquatique de l’Outaouais when possible. “It means a lot more independent training (due to) work hours.”
Hopkins welcomes the chance to workout with other paratriathletes at the Academy, which will hold weekend training camps twice a month at Carleton.
“It’s an amazing opportunity because we learn from each other,” she underlines.
It isn’t expected that paratriathletes will be flocking to the capital to live and train here, however.
“The goal is to reproduce this pilot project across the country,” explains Academy manager Michel Elibani, who’s had athletes from Alberta, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick visit for camps in Ottawa already nonetheless. “We want to move the academies out to spread out and help everybody.”
Creating a centralized national training centre isn’t feasible at the moment since “paratriathlete” is not yet a possible full-time job.
“Everyone has financial obligations they need to meet,” Hopkins notes. “Being a paraathlete means you’re self-funded. You need to continue to work.”
But if there is a place for a program to be based, it helps that it’s at a university, she adds.
“Many of the athletes like myself are a little older, but once there are more who are younger and either going into or coming out of university, they won’t be as far along in their careers, so they may have that flexibility to move to training centres,” Hopkins highlights.
For Carleton – which has hosted goalball and wheelchair rugby national championships, as well as wheelchair basketball competitions – having the Academy setup shop there represents a groundbreaking moment, signals Carleton disabilities coordinator Dean Mellway.
“It’s exciting for me to see,” says the former athlete who won both Summer and Winter Paralympic Games medals, adding he’s also enthused to see a new sport added to the Paralympic programme.
The Academy is also a sign of success for the school’s READ (Research, Education, Accessibility and Design) initiative, which launched in August. The partnership with Triathlon Canada stemmed from the parasport festival Carleton hosted in October.
Another big benefit of the partnership with Carleton is that the university’s industrial design department can be called on for help – if they require an adaptive bicycle that’s a little different than usual, for example, they’ve got engineers at their disposal to build it.
“We wanted to take a leadership role, but we wanted to develop something at Carleton that can be transferred anywhere across the country,” Mellway states. “Our goal was to show the way.”
Showing the way is also a theme for Hopkins, who plans to continue training and hopes that will mean she can get a place in the Rio Games, although she expects to have company by then.
“(Rio)’s in the long-term plan,” Hopkins smiles. “The closer we get, the more likely athletes are to cross over. Hopefully, it will encourage more people to give it a try. The level of competition will increase, and I think that’s only a good thing.”