Aurelie Rivard is chasing herself.
Canada’s most decorated para swimmer the last decade heads into her fourth Paralympic Games owning world records in three events.
Winner of five Paralympic gold medals and 10 overall, the 28-year-old from St-Jean-Sur-Richelieu, Que., says going faster than she ever has before is her challenge in Paris.
“I have to beat myself. I think I’m my biggest rival in all of this,” Rivard said. “It’s a different mentality to head to Games being the one being chased as opposed to chasing a ranking or new medals.
“I am a racer. I’m also passionate about what I do. I’m going to show up and do the best that I can and race the other girls, try to stay ahead as much as possible.
“If I can be as close as possible to my world records or break them, then technically the medals should follow.”
The 2024 Paralympic Games start with Wednesday’s opening ceremonies and end Sept. 8.
Canada’s team of 126 athletes will compete in 18 sports, supported by 117 coaches and national sports organization support staff.
Swimming kicks off Thursday at La Defense Arena, where Canada’s Summer McIntosh was a triple gold medallist and winner of four medals overall at the Olympic Games.
Rivard, who scored a Paralympic gold-medal hat trick in Rio in 2016, has a similarly ambitious schedule with four individual events plus relays over 10 days.
She holds the world’s fastest times in the 50, 100 and 400-metre freestyle in the women’s S10 classification.
Rivard, who has an underdeveloped left hand, will also race the 100 backstroke in Paris. She’s the defending champ in the 400 and 100 freestyle.
“To stay focused and on top of your game for 10 days straight is extremely hard,” Rivard said. “I work on that. I try to race three weekends in a row during the year.
“It works out well here because my racing schedule is very spread out over 10 days. I can kind of break it up into three little meets and adjust my preparation based on that.”
Canada’s 22 swimmers include three Paralympic champions and five world champions. They spent 10 days in Vichy at a pre-Games training camp.
“The first goal is swimming best times or improving your ranking,” head coach Martin Gingras said.
“It’s not to put pressure on swimmers in terms of number of medals. We are here to win medals, for sure, 100 per cent, but this is going to happen is because the athletes are ready to swim fast.”
Canadians claimed eight swimming medals at each of the past two Paralympic Games, including three gold, three silver and two bronze in Tokyo three years ago.
Fredericton’s Danielle Dorris, who was born with underdeveloped arms, is the defending champion in the women’s S7 50-metre butterfly.
Tess Routliffe of Caledon, Ont., sat out Tokyo’s Games with a broken back sustained while lifting weights.
The 25-year-old, whose hypochondroplasia causes shortened limbs, is the reigning SM7 women’s world champion in the 200 medley and 100 breaststroke.
Katarina Roxon of Kippens, N.L., will be the first woman to compete in swimming in five Paralympic Games in Paris. The 2016 champion in women’s SB8 100 breaststroke is missing her left arm below her elbow.
Nicholas Bennett of Parksville, B.C., who is autistic, is the reigning men’s world champion in the S14 200-metre freestyle and medley.
Rivard’s first Paralympic medal was a silver in London in 2012 when she was 16. Tokyo’s Summer Games were postponed a year from 2020 to 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The extra year and a half of training with no competition, and the isolation that accompanied that, took a toll on Rivard.
“I didn’t have anything else to do than swimming and training,” she recalled. “I was only talking about swimming, I was living with swimmers. I put a lot of pressure on myself. It became a little much.”
In her quest for more balance in her life, Rivard enrolled in law school at the University of Laval.
“I happen to be in a program in university that I’m passionate about,” said Canada’s flag-bearer at the 2016 closing ceremonies in Rio. “Somebody gave me the advice, and I thought it was really good, it’s to only be a swimmer when I’m at the pool. As soon as I leave the deck, I’m no longer a swimmer.”
She’s felt a seismic change in Canadians’ attitudes toward para athletes during her career. Rivard believes the 2015 Parapan American Games in Toronto was a turning point.
“People got to see really what we do, who we are,” she said. “I never had to explain what the Paralympics were afterwards, which is something I had to do so much before.
“People don’t realize, when I started, it’s not that long ago, it’s like 12,15 years ago, we weren’t seen as true athletes. People kept asking me ‘are you a real athlete or a Paralympian?’ It was two opposite concepts. We used to get looked down upon a little bit. It’s no longer the case most of the time.
“A lot of things evolved in the right direction in the past decade which I’m really happy about.”
— With files from Gregory Strong.
