Thursday, June 16, 2005 - The Daily News

Paralympian has the heart of a champion

Winning goes beyond moments on the podium – Petitclerc

By Bretton Loney

It took 51 seconds for Chantal Petitclerc to wheel to gold medal glory and to set a world record in the 400-metre sprint at the Athens Paralympics last summer.  But it took nearly two decades of painstaking effort and training, often alone on cold, winter mornings, to put herself in a position to attain “that perfect, magic moment in life.”

“What I’ve learned from my sport is that the moment of the podium is very important“, said Petitclerc, who went to the podium five times in Athens to collect gold medals.  

“But every single little thing that I have learned all the way for 17 years to get up to the podium is totally more important than (being on) the podium itself,: the 35-year old Quebec athlete told an audience attending a Halifax luncheon sponsored by NovaKnowledge.

Challenges

Petitclerc’s address hit all the touchstones of the positive lessons that sport can teach – discipline, goal setting, sportsmanship and the willingness to take on challenges.

Here is a story of a life that took a horrendous turn at age 13 when an accident left both her legs paralyzed.  A supportive physical education teacher, who helped Petitclerc to learn to swim at lunch hours, put her on the long road to Athens.

By 18, she discovered wheelchair racing and fell in love with it immediately.  She also learned something about herself: “I’m a very competitive person.”

By 1992, Petitclerc made Canada’s Paralympic team going to Barcelona where she won two bronze medals.  The Barcelona Games taught her another valuable lesson.  “I realized after Barcelona that talent was going to take me to a bronze medal, but to go to a gold medal, it was going to take a lot more than talent.  It was going to take a lot of work and a lot of discipline.”

And so Petitclerc set out to make discipline a daily part of her life.

In 1996, at the Atlanta Games, that effort paid off with Petitclerc winning two golds and three silvers.  She also set her first world record in the 100-metre sprint.  The next Paralympic Games in Sydney saw her cart home another two golds and two silvers.  By 2003, Petitclerc decided that her goal for the Athens Paralympics was nothing less than five golds.

“I decided the way to win these five gold medals was to work on details.  I was going to try and analyze every aspect of my performance to make it a little bit better.”

Gold-medal sprint

That meticulousness put Petitclerc over the top.  She raced 12 times in eight days in Athens, bringing home golds in all five of her events, including her most prized medal, the gold for the 400-metre sprint.

In that race, she beat Australian legend Louise Savage in a world record time of 51.91 seconds, destroying Savage’s previous record of 53.90 and denying the Aussie veteran an opportunity to win a 10^th gold medal in her last Paralympics.

“As she wheeled by me, she was almost in tears, but when she looked up at the screen and saw my time… in three seconds, she went from tears to a great, big smile and hugged me,” said Petitclerc.

“And that’s why this medal is so important, because she showed me in three seconds what was the heart of a true champion… and that’s what sport should be about.”

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