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10 Questions Canadian runner Dominique Tremblay
Updated: Sunday October 22, 2000 8:27 PM
By Luba Vangelova, Special to CNNSI.com Dominique Tremblay races in the 100-meter, 200-meter and 400-meter cerebral palsy wheelchair events. A sports journalist by profession, the 26-year-old Tremblay worked for an Ottawa TV station until a few months ago. This is his third time competing in Australia in the past year. 1. What brought you to Australia before? Last October I was in the Southern Cross Games, a pre-Paralympic meet. Then in January I was here for the Summer Down Under, which is for people with spinal cord injuries. I had a dual classification; I went only for the experience and the chance to compete in winter. Usually in the winter in Canada, I train on rollers. It's like a stationary bike for wheelchair racers. 2. What are your fondest memories of those trips? The people in Sydney. Every time I came here, people showed interest in me and what I was doing. I was at the world championships in Berlin in '94 and at the Atlanta Paralympics in '96, and I could pretty much have been naked in the middle of the street and nobody would have noticed I was there. But here, everybody is asking me. That feeling is really special. 3. How do you cope with the long flights to Australia, being in a wheelchair? The wheelchair doesn't change anything. The flight is as boring and long as it would be for [anyone]. And I can walk [a little], so if my butt is hurting, I can get up. 4. What are your plans for this trip? You don't have a chance to go to Australia every day. I'm still young, I have a lot of stuff I still need to learn, and traveling is a good way to do it. So if all goes well, I will stay for a year, on a working holiday visa. And my girlfriend lives in Australia. I met her last October when she was a volunteer at the Southern Cross Games. 5. Will you be doing any reporting? During the Paralympics, I am writing about one story a day for the Societé Radio-Canada web site. I am writing what my experience is and what people around me are experiencing. I'm here to make people know and understand what a Paralympic athlete is. 6. How did you get involved in sports? Since I was five years old, I always wanted to do sports. When you're disabled, skating is pretty much out of the question, and the same for football, baseball, etc. And cerebral palsy is not the best disability to do wheelchair basketball. I knew I would never be on the national team, no matter how hard I try. When I was 18, I learned there was wheelchair racing for athletes with cerebral palsy, so I started doing that. If you like sport and want to do it, it doesn't matter what disability you have; the disability is a detail. It's if you want and dream about it that is important. 7. Do you have sporting heroes? There are not a lot of wheelchair athletes around, and not a lot of history in wheelchair disabled sport. When I was a kid, I couldn't be Wayne Gretzky or whatever, so for me it's difficult to show I have heroes. Also, if you want to be recognized for what you do, you have to be yourself. So there's not necessarily a person I really admire besides my mom. 8. What's special about her? I always say that if my mom was not what she has been, I would not be here. She's the one when I was four or five years old that opened doors for me and showed that "no" is not an answer. If you want something, you have to fight for it. She wanted me to go to normal schools, not disabled schools, to make sure I had the right to do what I was capable of doing, and not just be nobody. She is here in Sydney now. 9. How important is the technology in wheelchair racing? Wheelchair racing is exactly like cycling. A wheelchair and a bicycle are pretty much the same; it's just the way of pushing it that is different, because you're using shoulders and arms instead of legs. But it's the same technology. Between poor and rich countries, there are big differences in wheelchairs. But when you're a top-level athlete, they're pretty much all the same. 10. Can poor countries be competitive in wheelchair racing? One of the best wheelchair relay teams in the world is from Thailand. But the rest are from Europe, the U.S., Canada, Australia and Japan. To be a disabled person in the third world is not easy to start with. You have to eat, work and survive first before doing sport. But there are some really good athletes from Africa and Asia.
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