Robbi Weldon

Rio 2016 marked the fourth Paralympic Games for multi-talented competitor Robbi Weldon. A dual-sport athlete, she competed in para-nordic skiing at both the Sochi 2014 and Vancouver 2010 Paralympic Winter Games. On the summer side, Weldon and her pilot at the time, Lyne Bessette, won gold in the road race at the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

At the Toronto 2015 Parapan American Games, Weldon won a silver medal in the time trial with her current pilot, Audrey Lemieux.

Weldon had a major setback in her preparation for Sochi in August 2013, during a Para cycling World Cup training session in Matane, Que. Weldon and her cycling pilot at the time, Emilie Roy, were hit by a car. Weldon broke her collarbone, shoulder blade and five vertebrae in the incident.

An active participant in numerous sports, Weldon first started out on downhill skis at age three. After many years of alpine racing and then ski instructing, she decided to take on a new challenge in 2002 with Para nordic skiing.

At the age of 15, Weldon was diagnosed with Stargardt Disease, a genetic form of macular degeneration affecting central vision. At Mohawk College in Brantford, Ont., she was introduced to two sports for the blind: goalball and power lifting, and went on to set national and world records in the squat, bench press and deadlift in 1995-96.

In addition to the Paralympic gold medal Weldon and Bessette won in London, a year earlier at the 2011 Parapan American Games in Guadalajara, Mexico, Weldon and Bessette won gold in all four tandem cycling events and were named Canada’s flag bearers for the Closing Ceremony.