20 years after she won 6 gold medals in Athens, Chantal Petitclerc continues to champion Paralympics
A rift with Athletics Canada proved to be the start of a lifetime of social action
In 2004, wheelchair sprinter Chantal Petitclerc collected six gold medals in Athens — five of the Paralympic variety, and one in an Olympic test event.
That same year, Perdita Felicien won the 60-metre hurdles at the world indoor championships, but stumbled on a hurdle in her Olympic final in Athens and finished out of the medals.
Despite that, Athletics Canada endeavoured to name Petitclerc and Felicien co-athletes of the year for 2004.
Petitclerc refused.
"To this day, I thought it was such a bad situation for Perdita to be caught in the middle. But I had to stand by principles and I had to be consistent with what I've always been saying, that a medal is a medal and that my medal had value and it had as much value," Petitclerc said last month.
The rift with Athletics Canada 20 years ago proved to be the start of a lifetime of social action.
Petitclerc, the Saint-Marc-des-Carrières, Que., native, who is now 54, is a member of the Canadian Senate, where she was appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2016. One of the main causes she works toward is the rights of peoples with disabilities.
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"If you believe in what you say, if you're consistent with what you've been saying about persons with disability, about your sport, then you can't hide away, you need to do it. So that's how I felt at the time," Petitclerc said.
"So I have no regrets, but it was not pleasant."
Four years after Athens, Petitclerc returned to the Paralympics for what she said would be her final Games.
In Beijing, the Canadian successfully defended each of her five titles — the T54 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1,500 metres.
Petitclerc called the accomplishment both the biggest challenge of her life, and the most fun she's ever had. She ended the year winning what is now called the Northern Star Award as Canada's top athlete.
Scott Russell, who covered the 2008 Paralympics for the CBC, recalled standing in the mixed zone alongside TV star Rick Mercer with tens of thousands of people in the stands for wheelchair racing.
"And the dominant person was Chantal Petitclerc," Russell said. "She set out to win five gold medals again. She did it in dominant fashion, and the place went crazy. It was really an astounding performance, and it just reinforced the central place of Chantal Petitclerc in Canadian sports history. It was Athens on steroids almost."
Michelle Stilwell, who won a pair of wheelchair sprinting gold medals in Beijing in the T52 category, roomed with Peticlerc at those Games. Competing for the first time in athletics after being in Sydney as a wheelchair basketball player, Stilwell said Petitclerc passed on late-night wisdom that allowed her to succeed on the track.
"She was a fierce competitor, but when you look at what she was willing to do in her preparations and her training and her planning and her diet and nutrition, she definitely raised the bar for everyone," Stilwell said.
It's that commitment to high performance that might have been Petitclerc's largest influence on the Paralympic movement — she admitted that she didn't fully realize how much time she put toward training until after she retired.
"Now that I'm in a normal life, sometimes it comes with a bit of an angle saying, 'how do you get back that level of extreme focus in other projects?' And it's not that easy," she said.
Though she cited increased corporate support and improved equipment and fitness as two of the biggest changes she's seen since her Paralympic debut in 1992, Petitclerc said the movement needs to keep its eyes on high performance as it trudges forward.
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"When it comes to sports and classifications, that would be my fear, is we can't lose track of that priority for me. And that's a very personal comment — it needs to remain high performance."
In retirement, Petitclerc has tried to keep her ties to the Paralympic movement, including serving as Canada's chef de mission at the 2014 Commonwealth Games and 2016 Paralympic Games.
Catherine Gosselin-Despres, the chief sport officer at the Canadian Paralympic Committee, said Petitclerc continues to be "very supportive.
"I do love my informal chats with her when she's kind of asking about certain specific athletes or what's happening on the team behind the scenes," Gosselin-Despres said. "I just know that she cares. So that's why she's asking the questions. So that's so nice, I feel, because she's travelling, she's doing all kinds of things and she's at the Senate.
"So having kind of her part of our kind of bigger team all the time is really positive."
Petitclerc continues to work side-by-side with Stilwell, too, who served as a provincial MP in B.C. from 2013 to 2020.
Stilwell said their conversations cover everything from MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) to the Accessible Canada Act, which strives to make the country barrier-free by 2040.
"It's tough to be a person in office now, but good on her for continuing to be that voice for not just people with disabilities, but in the sport world and women's rights and continuing to move things forward for all of us," Stilwell said.
It is clear Petitclerc leaves a legacy wherever she goes.
"What makes her really iconic is that she has won gold medals at the Olympics, the Paralympics, the Commonwealth Games, the world championships. She transcends all of the Games and any labels you want to put on the Games," Russell said.
"She's a champion, no asterisk. She's just a champion."
