EDMONTON – One of Canada’s most decorated Paralympic athletes is competing in Edmonton this weekend, in the 2013 Can Am Para-Swimming Championships.
“I’m racing four events. I raced two events yesterday: 50-metre butterfly, 200-metre backstroke. And today, the 200-metre individual medley and the 100-metre backstroke,” said 29-year-old Benoit Huot.
The Montreal native has won 19 medals across four Paralympic Games. But the road to the top wasn’t easy for the dedicated young man.
“It all started with a goal and a dream,” Huot said from the Kinsmen Sports Centre Saturday. “My dream as a kid, I wanted to become a hockey player and play for the Montreal Canadiens. And I tried to skate and it didn’t really work.”
Huot was born with a foot abnormality called clubfoot in his right leg. Babies born with clubfoot have shorter than usual tendons connecting the muscles to the bone, causing the foot to twist.
Huot had corrective surgery as an infant, but at eight years old he learned certain sports, including hockey and baseball, didn’t come very easily to him.
“Everything is smaller, so not much muscle mass and I can’t really develop it. I worked every day trying to make it grow and it doesn’t grow. And I have a foot that is much smaller than the other one and less mobility in the ankle,” he explained.
“I realized that the team sports were not my thing, because I felt at that specific age that I was a bit different than the other kids. I wasn’t as good as them in those sports. So swimming arrived in my life…I tried and it worked and I found my passion.”
And since then, Huot has not looked back; nor has he let his disability hold him back from becoming a champion.
“I take him like an able bodied swimmer,” said his coach, Pierre Lamy. “He’s able to do the training of all the best in the world.
“We have a good relationship together. And we don’t have to talk a lot to know what he feels, what he needs.”
Huot has also spent the last eight-and-a-half years in university, completing a degree in communications, marketing and management while training. He will write his last final exam Monday morning.
“It has been the hardest to combine both the sport and the academic in school and try to do well in both,” he explained. “Because my sport is now or never. In five years it will be too late and that’s why I wanted to focus on the sport. But, school is very important because after sport, well, you want to have a second passion or another career.”
Huot’s quickly become an inspiration to younger athletes.
“(He) helps young swimmers to go to that level. He is a good ambassador,” Lamy added.
Huot is one of 111 athletes competing in the Can Am Games this weekend. The international meet allows swimmers to see where they’re at in their training, and prepare for the road ahead.
“The ultimate goal is trying to go back to the Paralympics, which is Rio in 2016. But between now and then, there’s a lot of stuff, a lot of things that are going to happen,” Huot said. “I’m positive that I can still get a bit faster and learn, even though I’ve been doing this for over 20 years.
“The biggest challenge today… is trying to push myself and stay on the top of the world. I think that’s even harder than trying to get to the top of the world.”
With files from Shannon Greer, Global News.
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