Canadian Paralympic teams traveling a redemptive arc into Paris Games
5 teams enter Games at different points in their evolution
Heidi Peters joined the Canadian women's sitting volleyball squad in 2013, one year after the team missed out on qualification for London and essentially disbanded.
"I think literally two athletes didn't retire. The whole team just, poof, gone," Peters recalls.
It was, essentially, rock bottom.
Over the past decade, the team has steadily rebuilt itself. The Canadians qualified for Rio 2016 but placed seventh of eight teams. At Tokyo 2020, they played for a medal but wound up in fourth. And at the 2022 world championships, the team advanced one level further but fell short in the gold-medal game.
"I really think Paris is our time to put it all together," Peters said. "There is something so magical about the biggest stage in the world and I can't wait."
The women's sitting volleyball outfit is one of five teams Canada is sending to the Paris Paralympics, a list that also includes wheelchair rugby (a mixed sport), women's goalball and men's and women's wheelchair basketball.
Each of those teams heads to Paris at different points in their evolution, with different meanings ascribed to potential podium performances.
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For the women's sitting volleyball team, a gold medal would be the pinnacle of a long climb to the top.
Peters said that when she looks back on Rio, she wishes the team had taken its competition somewhat more seriously. She called Tokyo a "grind."
"We've lost in a lot of big moments and learned a lot in a lot of big moments and won some big games, too. But it's really hard to win and really hard to be at the top," she said. "And yes, we're veterans. And yes, most of us have played this sport for five-plus years, been in a lot of those big situations. But to be able to do that consistently at the top is a really difficult thing to do.
"And that's a lesson and that's something we have to figure out how to do."
Danielle Ellis, the team captain, is one of the two players who remain from before the 2012 Paralympics miss.
She said it would be a "dream come true" to win Paralympic gold.
"There's no big change that we can make that's gonna make that leap onto the podium. It's every day, doing everything that you do in the morning, from what time you set your alarm to how much water you drink to what you're eating," she said.
Then there's the men's wheelchair basketball team — a group of athletes playing the role of a once-dominant force, now attempting to recapture the glory one last time.
Paris is likely the last dance for this group of players, which is led by Patrick Anderson, who some refer to as the Michael Jordan of his sport.
Anderson has competed on the team since Sydney 2000 and has collected three Paralympic titles, one world championship, two world silver medals and a Paralympic bronze to boot.
But Anderson's team's trajectory has headed the opposite way of the women's sitting volleyball team.
Their most recent Paralympic medal came in 2012. Since then, they missed the knockout round in 2016, then fell in the 2021 quarterfinals.
Bo Hedges, the 44-year-old who's been with the team since 2007, said thoughts of this cycle being the end crept into his mind during qualification.
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"What if that's it? You don't want that to be it. But you never know. The competition's fierce around the world," he said. "And if Paris is my last Games, I think it'll be a great Games to go out on."
Hedges added that the 2026 world championships are slated to be held in Ottawa, which might truly represent the final time this core competes together.
The women's wheelchair basketball team, meanwhile, is looking for a breakthrough after consecutive quarterfinal eliminations. It's headed to Paris with a new head coach in Michèle Sung.
"The coaches have changed the mentality in our team's core," team captain Cindy Ouellet said. "We just want to prove that we're not a fifth-place team and can reach that final game."
Similarly, the wheelchair rugby team is coming off a pair of fifth-place finishes in Tokyo and at 2022 worlds.
Its mission, beyond returning to the Paralympic podium for the first time since 2012, stretches back to the inventor of the game, Canadian Duncan Campbell.
"I feel a certain amount of responsibility to kind of keep the game true to his vision for the sport and what he wanted. I think a lot of Canadians feel protective of wheelchair rugby," said Travis Murao, who's headed to his fifth consecutive Games.
Murao said he was introduced to the sport by Campbell, who was his recreational therapist after breaking his neck.
"He showed me all the ins and outs of being a quadriplegic, being in a wheelchair, how to travel, how to live your daily life. He showed me how to get in and out of my car, or how to tie my shoelaces, in and out of a bathtub, as well as brought me into wheelchair rugby," Murao said.
Lastly, there's the women's goalball team, attempting to ride the momentum of its Paralympic qualifier at the Parapan Am Games, when it beat the U.S. in a testy gold-medal match.
"It was just such a surreal moment," captain Amy Burk said. "It took us a long time to finally feel like we are going. We were expecting to wake up the next morning like, hey, that was a dream."
After completing back-to-back championships in 2008, the goalball team lost a quarterfinal game in OT in London and has not returned to the podium since.
Burk said that London loss continues to live with her.
"You learn so much when you lose big games. And as long as you can take away something that you can learn from those losses, it's really helpful," she said.
In Paris, Burk and her team can complete that redemptive arc.
