Chantal Petitclerc

By Julie Barlow

From the front entrance of the weight room at Montreal’s Claude Robillard sports centre, Chantal Petitclerc is invisible, hidden among rows of nautilus equipment and Stairmasters. I finally spot her behind a row of stationary bicycles -- I see her hands fly up and hear them crash down on the wheels of her racing chair, which is set up on rollers for stationary training. "I’m jogging," she says, looking up with a smile.

Fifteen minutes -- or six kilometres -- later, Chantal is ready to call it a day. Dressed in a T-shirt and tights, her red cheeks streaming with sweat, she doesn’t look anything like the groomed and polished Chantal I’ve seen on TV presenting Loto-Quebec’s lottery results. But it’s her -- the same low-key, determined woman who collected five medals at the 1996 Paralympics.

"Time for my acrobatics," she says as she begins the perilous manoeuvre out of her $7,000 racing chair into the "street chair" sitting beside it. She is literally squeezed between the wheels of the racing chair. But before I even think to offer her a hand, she pulls herself up, balancing herself on the wheels, and literally pitches herself into her street chair. "I’ve never had an accident on the track, but I’ve had a few doing this," she says with a wry smile.

Paraplegic since the age of 13, the 27 year-old Quebec native brought home two gold medals and three silvers from last summer’s Paralympics, and set a new world record in the 100 m. "You can’t imagine a more perfect moment," she says, referring to when she mounted the podium to receive her medals.

After eight years of training, Chantal Petitclerc has become a role model for athletes with disabilities. Her international victories have assured her almost the same amount of financial support as able-bodied athletes receive -- still a rarity among Paralympic athletes. Both Loto-Quebec and the Metropolitan insurance company sponsor her, and the federal government recently upgraded her carding (classification) from B to A -- she’s the elite of the elite.

Her trainer, Peter Eriksson, a Swedish-born, former world-class speed skater, has only admiration for his prodigy. "Chantal is probably one of the most outstanding athletes in Canadian history," he says.

People in Quebec are bound to compare Chantal with other Quebec sports divas. But she has neither the charming innocence of Olympic bronze medal diver Annie Pelletier, nor the warrior side of biathlon gold medalist Myriam Bedard. The first adjective Chantal brings to mind is relaxed, then confident, and finally -- disciplined. She trains alone, no fewer than four hours a day, six days a week, doing weights and rolling on the indoor track at Claude Robillard, or outdoors on the Gilles-Villeneuve racetrack, depending on the weather.

Chantal is somewhat of a loner. She is more inclined to cut herself off from teammates in order to concentrate before races than she is to socialize, as many do. Chantal is also one of the rare wheelchair athletes who trains alone -- not with a team. Her coach lives in Ottawa, so most of her training is done by fax and by phone.

Three nights a week Chantal heads to Loto-Quebec for her "other job," presenting lottery results on TV. She got the job two years ago, when she was looking for something flexible that she could combine with full-time training. "We chose Chantal because she expresses herself well," says Loto-Quebec’s publicist Jean-Pierre Roy. "She’s very good at what she does and she is a great team worker."

"I think I project a good image, a dynamic image," says Chantal of her TV work. "It’s time the media stopped portraying the disabled as sad victims -- you know, the soap-opera image of the disabled. I’m good at my job, and it just so happens that I’m also in a wheelchair."

In spite of her jam-packed schedule -- she goes to training camps in Florida and flies to competitions all over world --Chantal says she leads a normal life. "I like reading, films and quiet suppers with friends. I never train after six o’clock!" She lives in an apartment in the Montreal neighbourhood of Villeray with her boyfriend, Bernard Ouellet. "We are both very independent," she says. "We split household chores fifty-fifty, like any couple. I actually learned most household jobs in a wheelchair. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to drive or clean the house or buy groceries standing up!"

The eldest of a family of three, Chantal says she’s a "normal woman" who had a "normal childhood." Her parents separated when she was a child: her mother lives in Saint-Marc-des-Carrieres, a town 75 km west of Quebec City, and her father is a construction worker in Sept-Iles, in Quebec’s north shore region.

"Education was very important to my father," she says. Chantal studied history for three years at the University of Alberta and dreamed of continuing her studies, but had to make the same choice many elite athletes are forced to: between school and training. She still plans on finishing her B.A. and dreams of doing a Master’s degree one day. Meanwhile, she is an avid reader and loves "ideas and languages." She wants to learn German before she turns 30.

Chantal was paralyzed from the waist down when a barn door fell on her in 1983 -- she was playing with friends on a farm near her home town of Saint-Marc-des-Carrieres. "I always accepted my accident," she says. Her recovery -- which she calls a "learning period" -- was tough the first year, she says, "but it didn’t really affect me. I think when we’re young, and maybe a little na‹ve, we don’t take it as seriously. Since we haven’t really built anything in life yet, it doesn’t really destroy anything."

In motivational speeches and presentations to business people and community groups, and in elementary and high schools, Chantal has one message: "You’re wondering what it takes to succeed? Well, it’s not too complicated. You have to have guts..." To a group of women with disabilities gathered at Montreal’s YWCA on a Saturday afternoon, Chantal passes on similar advice. "You have to be ready to take risks," she says. "Don’t be afraid to fail sometimes. Failure, after all, is what gives value to success."

Chantal was not particularly athletic as a child, but after her accident she decided to find a physical activity to stay in shape. She took up swimming on the advice of a PhysEd teacher. She discovered wheelchair racing in 1987 -- or rather, it discovered her. Wheelchair racing coach Pierre Pomerleau spotted her while she was weight training at the Fran‡ois-Charon rehabilitation centre in Quebec City, and he invited her to train with him.

"There was nothing outstanding about her physically. What struck me was her determination," Pomerleau says. Most elite level wheelchair athletes were already athletes before the onset of their disability. In that sense, too, Chantal was unusual.

Chantal’s desire to achieve and "surpass herself" only came later, she says. "It took me a while, but at a certain point I realized that to succeed, I really had to work." She got serious about racing in 1991 and switched trainers. "Pierre Pomerleau got me to the international level, but Peter Eriksson is much more aggressive than me. I needed someone like that."

Wheelchair races are won as much in the head as with the arms. Before competitions, racers go through a sort of intimidation game, exchanging insults and trying to break each other’s concentration. It was an element of competing which Chantal had trouble mastering. "I remember before one race, a girl told me I would be the first to die on the track. I almost did die -- of fear!" Nowadays, it’s Chantal who intimidates younger racers.

Chantal dreams of the day the International Olympic Committee will grant wheelchair racing official Olympic status, and she is quickly becoming a spokesperson for the cause alongside wheelchair athlete Jeff Adams. "There’s nothing disabled about wheelchair racing," she says. "It’s a separate discipline of its own. I think the Paralympics are necessary and important, but I don’t think it’s my place anymore. I think wheelchair racing belongs in the Olympics."

Chantal is convinced she would be able to beat able-bodied racers. "The weight of their legs would slow them down," she says.

Chantal is working to win the gold in the 800-m demonstration event at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. It won’t be a given, though, since so far her talent seems to be in sprints. One of Chantal’s greatest assets is her starting technique -- a great boost in sprints, which are won or lost in the first few seconds of the race. Chantal’s starts are explosive, thanks to quick muscle reflexes and a well-polished technique.

Peter Eriksson is confident Chantal can improve her times in the longer distances. For that matter, he considers her 1500 m to have been her best performance in Atlanta -- and not her 16.7-second world record in the 100 m! "She was only thirteen-hundredths of a second off the world record in the 1500 m," he explains. Even if Chantal has distinguished herself in sprints, Eriksson thinks her real strengths are in longer distances. "She’s a thinker. She likes strategy. There’s not much strategy in the 100 m."

Chantal is working hard to achieve her dream. With only three years left before the Sydney Games, she’s determined to win an Olympic gold -- whether wheelchair racing is granted official Olympic status or not. "An Olympic medal is worth more to me than an Paralympic medal. I’m not hiding it -- I’m doing everything I can to win."

(Julie Barlow is a freelance writer living in Montreal, Quebec).