Determined athletes compete at Paralympic Games late in careers

PARIS – After he broke his back in a mountain bike accident in 2011, Peter Isherwood of Vancouver played many Para sports, including wheelchair rugby and wheelchair tennis, before he discovered Para table tennis in 2015.

That hard toil and sweat it took to excel in a sport, which he describes as one that everyone plays but few master, reached its peak this past weekend in Paris. Isherwood made his Paralympic Games debut at age 47 after two Parapan Am Games appearances.

‘’I wasn’t in sport before my accident and eventually discovered Para table tennis and fell in love with it,’’ said Isherwood, who purchased an ipong Table Tennis robot, got his own table and started practicing proficiently to improve his game.

 ‘’For me it was the competition. There was an end goal to it also that gave me a different perspective and an opportunity to give back.”

Meanwhile Yuka Chokyu of Vancouver and Lance Cryderman of Sudbury, Ont. returned to the Paralympic Games scene after very long absences.

Cryderman was a member of the 2000 Paralympic team in Sydney, then went to school earning a master’s degree in business administration and focused on his family. He returned to boccia in 2017, initially had success on the national scene, then was on the world championships team for 2022.

‘’It has been an absolute joy to be here,’’ said Cryderman. ‘’I am very thankful for the opportunity to be back at the Games 24 years later. I am always very proud to wear the maple leaf.

‘’I’m so fortunate to have all those people behind me especially my wife Danielle. She is my rock, my everything and none of this would have happened without her.’’

For Chokyu, who’ll turn 58 in December, it was a 16-year gap. She competed at three consecutive Paralympic Games in wheelchair tennis in 2000, 2004 and 2008, reaching the round of 16 each time. She then switched to Para badminton and became one of the top players in the Americas.

However Para badminton did not become a Paralympic sport until the 2020 Games in Tokyo. Chokyu fell short in her bid to make that team but exceptional performances at the Parapan Am Games in 2023 (bronze in women’s wheelchair singles) and a round of 16 berth at the 2024 worlds, helped her earn a ticket to Paris. By June she was ranked 10^th in the world.

‘’This was a great experience for me,’’ said Chokyu. “It felt a bit lonely being the only one in our sport to make the team but on the other hand it meant I got 100 percent attention from the coaches.’’

All three didn’t get past the preliminaries in their events.

‘’We all have to embrace the fact that this is a wonderful experience: win or lose,’’ said Cryderman.