When Saskatchewan athletes do well on the biggest stages of sport we in this province tend to celebrate right along with the athletes.
It’s something about this province and sport.
We see it annually in the outpouring of support for our beloved Roughriders.
We’ve seen it in the way the province has embraced the Saskatchewan Rush.
Keely Shaw from Midale, SK. will head to Tokyo later this year as part of a contingent of nine para cyclists who will compete for Canada at the Paralympics.
Since being announced to the team Shaw has come to appreciate how supportive the province can be.
“These last 24 hours has been crazy,” she said in an interview July 8. “Being from Saskatchewan where pride runs so deep. I feel it in any race I’m in.”
In Tokyo it will just be better “with the maple leaf on my back and Saskatchewan blood in my veins,” she said.
Shaw said being selected to go to Tokyo is still something she is trying to get her head around.
“If I’m being perfectly honest I’m not sure it’s completely sunk in yet,” she said. She added it might not feel completely real “. . . until I’m on the plane headed to Tokyo.”
But, the feeling of pride is certainly there.
“I’m so honoured to be named to the team going to Tokyo,” said Shaw.
In 2016, cycling was Canada’s most successful sport at the Rio Paralympics—Canada’s para-cycling team won nine medals.
Shaw said a number of those medalists return to the Canadian team headed to Tokyo which adds to how big a moment it is for her career. She was quick to point to the likes of Tristen Chernove who won three medals – gold, silver, and bronze in Rio in 2016, and Kate O’Brien, who set a 500-metre time trial world record on her way to winning gold in the women’s C4 category and followed up by improving the flying 200 metre record by 1.438 seconds.
Shaw said having athletes such as O’Brien and Chernove to work with and learn from is important.
Shaw would say the other riders are part of a team that has cycling to be more of a team sport that one might imagine, with everyone from the team nutritionist and psychologist to coaches and teammates make up a support network that is very much a team pushing individual cyclists to excel.
As for preparing for Tokyo, Shaw said she will try to just make it another day of competition.
“I’ll try and make out like it’s any other competition,” she but then added “. . . It’s going to be tough.” But that’s where she said she’ll do what she always does, fall back on all the training, and listen to the coaches.
For Shaw being part of a team comes rather naturally since she was a talented youth hockey player until a horse riding accident damaged a blood vessel in her brain, which left the left side of her body partially paralyzed.
Shaw said she knew she still needed to feed her competitive side and when introduced to Para-sports it seemed a good fit – almost. She tried cross country skiing initially.
“I was really, really bad at it,” she said, adding “and it was cold. I didn’t have fun at all.”
But, para-cycling was different. Shaw said she had never done more than bicycle on the farm like most Saskatchewan kids, but she said para-cycling as something she could “train for on my own.” She tried it, and as they say the rest is history.
In some ways the sport of cycling and hockey have commonalities, in particular the need for leg strength and bursts of speed, said Shaw adding that may have helped her in transitioning sports.
“There’s a lot of crossover ... And, I didn’t have to learn a whole new set of rules,” she said.
Shaw’s first competition was in Moose Jaw in 2017, by 2018 she was at the World Championships.
At the UCI Para-cycling Track World Championships in Rio de Janeiro in March that year she placed fifth – a personal best – in the individual pursuit race. Just 12 months later, she won her first world championships medal: a silver.
Cycling at the 2020 Summer Paralympics will take part in two separate locations—track cycling at the Izu Velodrome and road cycling on the Fuji Speedway. Track events will run between Aug. 25-28 and road races will take place Aug. 31-Sept. 3.
