Chantal Petitclerc has won 10 consecutive gold medals in wheelchair racing at the Beijing Paralympics. And the Canadian is more than 20 years older than many of her fellow competitors at the event, which followed the 29th Olympiad in August in the same city.
The native of Montreal, Quebec was injured in a farm accident at age 13 but within two months, with the encouragement of her high school physical education teacher, she began to develop her strength and stamina by swimming and participating in other activities that she could do without the use of her legs. At 18, while attending Universite Laval in Quebec City, she was introduced to wheelchair sports and fell in love with racing. Chantal competed in the Paralympic Games for the first time in Barcelona in 1992, returning with two bronze medals, the start of an impressive career.
At Beijing, the 38-year-old broke her own world records in the 200-metre and 800-metre events and she also holds the best marks for 100, 400 and 1500. She is planning to retire in her home town where she is well-known as a motivational speaker and will continue competing in marathons and road racing. Despite attendance at university to earn history and social sciences degrees, she has never had the time to work in her chosen field. However, her competitive successes have resulted in innumerable interviews with the print and broadcast media whose executives quickly noticed how natural she is in front of the camera, and encouraged her towards what has become a second career as a television and radio host.
The Paralympic Games offer disabled athletes an opportunity to compete at power-lifting, archery, cycling, shooting, wheel-chair rugby, swimming and others. China led in the medal standings at the end of the 16-day event with 211, followed by Great Britain with 102. The USA and Ukraine earned 99 and 74 medals respectively.
In the September 1st opening ceremonies, one hundred and seventy children from the special education school in Dongcheng District, Beijing, saluted the theme of the ceremony, "Two Olympics, Equally Splendid." The students watched video of Chinese athletes winning gold medals, student volunteers working and teachers and students watching events, which gave an introduction to the Paralympic Games and also explained in detail how to help people with a disability. At the end of the ceremony, everyone learned the Olympic song, "Over Here," in sign language.
China’s domination in the medal count showed especially in the Wheelchair Fencing competition, when the men’s team won five gold medals in the six events. The women were equally impressive, although they only took home one gold. No athlete from outside Asia managed to get on the podium in the women's competitions and only Thailand prevented China and Hong Kong from sweeping all 12 women's medals.
As the 2008 Beijing Paralympic Games came to an end with the closing ceremony at the Bird’s Nest stadium, the spectacular performance of sound, light and sentiment provided a fitting finale to what was a remarkable and memorable event in the Chinese capital. Athletes are already preparing for the 2010 Paralympic Winter Games in Vancouver, Canada, an event which promises to be equally inspiring.
