Ross Wilson

2020 Paralympian Ross Wilson hasn’t slowed down since his double silver medal performance at the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio. In his first major event after the Games, he swept gold in all three events at the 2017 World Track Championships in Los Angeles.

He has collected medals at the 2017, 2018 and 2019 road worlds as well as the 2018 track worlds.

He kept busy in 2020. He raced at the track cycling worlds in Milton, Ont., just before the pandemic hit. He was Tristen Chernove’s assistant in his BC Epic 1000 race that summer and, at the end of the year, he joined Chernove in the Everesting challenge: vEveresting, where they virtually ascended the height of Mount Everest on their stationary bikes. Both events raised funds for the Paralympic Foundation of Canada. 

In Rio, he was part of Canada’s most successful sport at the Games with silver in the individual pursuit and silver in the time trial on the road.

He had a tough 2015: in June, Wilson was preparing for the road worlds in Switzerland. A car backed out of a parking stall and struck him while he was cycling around 30 kilometres per hour. He flew through the back window, breaking his clavicle, some ribs and vertebrae and requiring hundreds of stiches.

Remarkably, Wilson competed three months later at the Toronto 2015 Parapan Am Games. But disaster struck again. A crash during a race left him with more than 100 stiches in his shoulder, forcing him to temporarily leave the sport he was so passionate about.

In March 2016, he returned to win his second consecutive silver medal in the 3000-m at the Para cycling Track World Championships.