“I thought, this is it. The end of the road. It’s all over.”
The sobering thought that goes through every athlete’s mind after a major injury that they can’t explain. Slowly you come to realize that it may have been for a reason and it’s all a part of your journey. The road to recovery was slow and frustrating at times.
But first, I’ll shed some light on how I got where I am today and the obstacles I had to overcome.
The Beginning
I always loved track, but was never able to run because I was born with what is considered a Syme’s amputation on my right foot. I’m not missing any bones, ligaments or muscles, everything is there but just in a smaller form. For this reason, I was not able to run without what is called a running blade. I was always exposed to track, my mom ran and actually got recruited by Ben Johnson’s coach but her mom, unfortunately, did not let her go. Track was never a big sport in my family, we were predominantly the classic Greek soccer-loving family. My interest to run grew when my dad who is a high school principal took me to watch a 16-year-old student that ran 10’1 in the 100 meter dash, a very impressive time, compete in OFSAA. As I watched him run really fast, I pictured myself doing that one day. It was very intriguing to me at a very young age.
I was becoming more fascinated by the sport. An athlete I look up to in Paralympic sport specifically is Stefanie Reid, a long jumper. She competes in the UK but used to compete for Canada. She has the same disability as me and I’ve known her since I was a baby. We met each other at a conference after her boating accident that resulted in an amputation. A few years later she got a running leg and started training for her sport. I was still so young obviously and would see her at the hospital where we get our blades and everything. I saw her getting her blade and that fostered my desire for one.
I always did school track but my parents didn’t want me to join a track club until I was older. As with individual sports, it’s very easy for kids to specialize at too young of an age, and I agreed with them. So, I played several team-based sports at a young age and finally joined my first track club (Phoenix Athletics) when I was 11, after receiving my first running blade.
When the time came I chose to attend Bill Crother’s High School when the time came, an excellent school with even better facilities. They have a high-performance program catered to athletes. They understood on a higher level the needs of athletes that are committed to Canadian teams and they were good at dealing with them. With my track career picking up, they were extremely accommodating with school work and me missing weeks to months for competition.
“Everything transpired from there.”
International Competition
It honestly feels like such a long time ago. I made the Worlds team a year before Rio and I didn’t even think I was going to make that team. I mean, I was only 16 years old, I was a huge underdog going in. I knew for Rio that I had really fast times that were competitive but I didn’t know if they were going to take me based on my age. They talked a lot about long term athlete development and things like burnout so I thought they may be setting me up to let me go as nicely as possible. At the end of the day, it comes down to your raza points, which is how far off you are from the world record.
“Based off that, I made the team no problem.”
I had really good qualifying races that landed me a spot in the Women’s 200m Finals in London. I worked so hard to get where I was and my dreams were coming true.
But then …
“I honestly didn’t know what happened. It was probably the best start of my race that I had ever had in my life and it literally just blew up on me.”
A feeling like no other. It was excruciating pain, the doctors told me I had a 3-centimetre tear in my hamstring. They said if it was any higher in my hamstring I would’ve required surgery, which then would’ve led to being the end of my career as its nearly impossible to run fast after hamstring surgery. It just doesn’t work like that.
To think that in a split-second, I went from being 100 meters away from possibly reaching the podium to having something so unexpected occur. The road to recovery was tough. I was on crutches for two weeks and I couldn’t even walk. I couldn’t even put on my pants by myself, I couldn’t move and when I did try to it caused a lot of pain. It slowly got better and when I was able to get off the crutches, I was able to walk slowly by myself. From there I started doing exercises with my physio and things like acupuncture and massage to help with the recovery process.
Once I was able to start up with my coach again, we had a hamstring protocol. It was a 10-day program, but don’t be fooled by the name it didn’t take only 10 days. You would start on Day 1 until it didn’t hurt anymore, and then move on to the next day which would be a little harder. Progressively getting harder each day.
There are moments where it feels like this is never going to end. It’s all about putting things into perspective and seeing the bigger picture. I knew it was going to get better, it just took a long time and longer then we all anticipated. But there was honestly no rush to get back and I was lucky to have a great team around me that was able to bring me back to full health. I didn’t feel pressure from anybody. I was able to come back on my own terms with the entirety of my recovery taking 5-months.
Currently
To avoid reinjuring my hamstring or more importantly avoid any other possible injuries in the future, I have changed my training. I was only 16 when I went to Rio. I was not on the proper strength and conditioning regimen. At that age, you’re really not supposed to be. Now I have my own strength trainer and everything is on a full program. I have aligned myself to have everything in check for the upcoming 2019 World Championships in Dubai. Proper training, eating habits, everything.
I’m training two more days than I used to. I’m on a program now that will excel my performance moving forward. Additionally, as an athlete, I have to mentally prepare myself for the Championships and the Tokyo Games.
The most important thing is just taking things day by day because I think a lot of us especially myself see the end goal and they look too far ahead but they do not look at all the steps they need to do to get there. Obviously, track gets overwhelming and it is easy to get lost in all the things you are doing because success is not a straight-line shot. You have your ups and down when trying to get from Point A to Point B, but you just have to keep focused, goal oriented and good things will come.
For the upcoming Worlds, people know I am medal potential now. I really want to medal to show them that I am fast and have just had some unfortunate circumstances occur in the past. I want to prove to them that I am someone to keep an eye on.
I feel like this is going to be a good year, and hopefully, after World’s, those 8 months leading into Tokyo will be pretty solid.
Looking Ahead
My goal is to compete at 3 more games up until 2028 before I call it quits. Walking away from the sport I love on my own terms would be amazing.
When I look into the future, there’s a bigger picture of what I want to do. I am currently taking Sports Media at Ryerson. I want to get into broadcasting eventually.
Presently, I want to create a brand for myself through my track career, that will help to establish things like public speaking. A platform to educate people on Para-Sport, Paralympic athletes, people with disabilities etc.
“I want to help bring it forward to the limelight.”
I think there is obviously a huge lack of Paralympic sports coverage and education on Para-Sport in Canada. The way I see it is, you see all these athletes and they’re huge public figures and people know who they are. And I think that there are so few Paralympic athletes that actually establish themselves as this kind of public figure, influencer, impactful person, so people don’t know who they are.
I think using social media to my advantage in the future would be huge but ultimately at the end of the day, it’s about getting Paralympic sports coverage on the same level as Olympic sport. I want to be a spokesperson, a figurehead, someone that can make a difference in the sport as it’s where my passion lies.
Thank You
“It really does take a village.”
To help you to be where you want to be, you can’t do it without all those people helping in their own unique way. It starts with my parents dropping me off at practice, coming to support me at competitions, my prosthetist making prosthetic legs, my coach making a program for me to make sure I’m running well. My extended family who have also been able to support me and bring me places when my parents were not able to.
I feel like it just continues on and on, the number of people that have an impact on this situation. My sponsors, without them I wouldn’t be able to afford my prosthetic if they weren’t able to give me the product.
With that whole community fostering my success, I have been so fortunate and I hope to keep that moving forward into the future. I would not be able to continue what I want to do and reach my goals without it.
Written by: Carter Harrison
Contributor: Marissa Papaconstantinou
“You are braver than you seem and stronger than you believe, never lose hope.” – A.A. Milne
SPAD Players Tribune 