Parksville athlete Michelle Stillwell has competed in three previous Summer Paralympic Games, but when she rolls onto the track in Rio de Janeiro next week for the 2016 Games, one thing will be new.
This will be her first Paralympics as a B.C. Liberal MLA and cabinet minister.
“It certainly has changed things,” Stilwell said of her new training schedule since being elected in 2013. “First off, becoming MLA meant less time on an actual track and more time on rollers. On the plus side, now when I get up at 5:30 (a.m.) I go right to the garage to train instead of driving to Nanaimo and unloading the chair.”
A rigorous training schedule — two hours a day before going to work, with extra workouts thrown in on weekends, has made Stilwell one of the planet’s pre-eminent wheelchair racers.
She goes into the Sept. 7-18 Rio Games already in possession of four Paralympic gold medals, a Paralympic record for the 200-metre dash and several world records. The impressive resumé was built after she lost her first race to a nine year old.
Because the 200 won’t be contested in her category this year, Stilwell will race in the 100 metres — which she won in Beijing in 2008 before placing second in London in 2012 — and make her first Paralympic try at 400 metres.
“It’s unfortunate, because the 200 is my favourite event,” she said. “In the 100, by the time you get to top speed you’re finished. The 400 is far more challenging in the sense it’s a full-on sprint that’s that much longer.
“(But) I’ve learned to love the 400 this year,” she added with a laugh.
Stilwell will race in the 400-metre final next Saturday, Sept. 10. Her 100 prelim will be run Sept. 15, with the T52 final Sept. 17 on the last full day of competition.
Stilwell, who was left paralyzed at age 17 following a fall down a flight of stairs while piggy-back riding with a friend, earned her first Paralympic gold in the 2000 Sydney Games — in wheelchair basketball.
She retired from competition to marry and begin a family after those games, but continued to be involved in basketball as a coach for a community team. It was while on a trip with that team that she met veteran Team Canada coach Peter Lawless, who coaxed her into trying wheelchair racing.
“He saw me on the basketball court and saw how fast I moved my hands,” Stilwell said. “I would say he harassed me. He kept phoning and sending emails to encourage me to try track.”
Stilwell was essentially tricked into her first race, after agreeing to meet Lawless at a track meet in Duncan, on a cold, rainy day, to see how the racing was run.
“I cursed it, because in basketball you at least stay dry,” Stilwell said with a laugh.
At the Duncan track, Lawless got Stilwell into another athlete’s racing chair to get a feel for it, then walked up and down the straightaway with her while asking if she could go any faster, she said.
“When I said, ‘yeah’, he said, ‘Why don’t you stay and do a race? You’re already in the chair, and there’s a race in 30 minutes.”
What he didn’t tell her was that the race was 1,500 metres in length.
“I assumed it would be 100 metres,” Stilwell said. “I got beat by a nine-year-old boy, and vowed that would certainly never happen again. I got the bug then.”
Stilwell has raced every distance from 100 metres to a full marathon (26.2 miles), but specializes in sprint racing. As she trained and quickly improved, moving from regional to national and international competition, Stilwell gained sponsors and the funding support issued to all members of the Canadian National Team.
With her move into government in 2013, however, that all went away. She gave up her corporate sponsorships to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, and said she declined carding money from Sport Canada so that it might instead go to young, up-and-coming athletes facing their own financial struggles.
“Certainly those things help and would make it far easier on my family,” she said. “But I do have a job that provides me with income, and there are young athletes who are struggling and deserve that opportunity.”
This Paralympics marks yet another change for Stilwell. It will be the first Games at which she will not be accompanied by her husband Mark and the first without her son Kai, now 15, who traveled to Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012.
Though she was impressed by the way Rio pulled off the recent Summer Olympic Games, the news coming from the city in the months and weeks leading up to the Olympics — including the Zika virus outbreak, political unrest and rioting in outlying areas — made her hesitant to include them.
“Actually, I have asked all my friends and family not to come,” she said. “When I’m there I don’t get to see them or interact anyway, so all I do is worry about them.”
This time, she hopes to concentrate all her energy on preparing for and racing at her peak abiliity, particularly after her narrow loss in the 100 metres in London in 2012.
“Certainly, my goal is always to top the podium,” she said. “But I will definitely have to work on my mental preparation for the Games. I know I’m ready physically; I feel fit and fast. The question is whether I can pull it all together the moment the gun goes off, to successfully perform at that moment.”
