PEDAL TO THE MEDAL

O'Brien overcomes health struggles, adversity to seal track cycling bronze

- DONNA SPENCER

PARIS Canada’s first medallist of the 2024 Paralympic Games struggled to lift and diaper her son just a few weeks before stepping onto the podium in Paris.

Calgary track cyclist Kate O’Brien earned a bronze medal in the women’s C4 and C5 500-metre time trial Thursday afternoon at the SaintQuentin-en-Yvelines Velodrome.

“It means a huge amount,” O’Brien said. “I don’t even know to describe it.”

The 36-year-old was a silver medallist in her Paralympic debut in Tokyo three years ago.

Dystonia stemming from her brain injury in a velodrome crash in 2017 became acute this year. She has had involuntary muscle cramping and contractions in her limbs. Part of her therapy at Vancouver’s G.F. Strong Rehabilitation Centre was attaching clothes pins to buckets to get her hands working, and that was a challenge for her just three months out from the Paralympics.