Taylor knows she belongs with the best

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This article was published 11/07/2024 (422 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Leanne Taylor now knows she can outduel the best para-triathletes in the world.

Recently met with the ultimate sense of self-belief, the Oak Bluff resident is on a roll heading into her first Paralympic Games and has become a real threat to medal in Paris this summer.

“I am the kind of person who needs to see the same thing multiple times to believe it,” Taylor told the Free Press on Thursday, a day after officially being named to the Canadian team.

Taylor, 31, has risen to No. 3 in the world after a pair of wins and two more podium finishes in her last four races.

She was inspired after her first international victory at the Americas Paratriathlon Championship in Miami, Fla. in March — which secured her spot in Paris — but remained uncertain about where she stood among the sport’s top athletes. A runner-up effort at the World Triathlon Championship Series (WTCS) event in Yokohama, Japan, and a win at the WTCS in Swansea, Wales, brought even more excitement.

“The races that are the most valuable to show where you’re at are the ones that have your best competition, and Japan had a lot of my best competition,” she said.

It was a narrow second-place finish at the WTS in Montreal last weekend that finally left her fully convinced that she belonged with the best.

“After Montreal was when I was willing to say, ‘Every single time, I’m in this position, so that must be where I rank amongst my competitors,’” said Taylor, who now owns 11 podium finishes in 25 career races.

“I think it’s been a big breakthrough season, so it’s really exciting, and I think the best part about it is to be going into the Games looking at that podium and looking at that No. 1 spot and being serious about the possibility of landing on it.

“I think a lot of people are concerned, and I would’ve been too, that that would add a lot of pressure but I think it’s just the feeling that I have right now…”

Taylor, who will race for Canada on Sept. 2, is using the next six weeks to iron out every wrinkle before she leaves for the French capital.

Next week, she flies to Flagstaff, Ariz. where she will train for two weeks at 2,000 metres above sea level, then return home for a final tune-up.

Taylor was invited to race on the Paris course last year, so she understands what she’s up against. The track, she said, will have a lot of u-turns, so she’s been practising ways to maintain a high speed during turns.

“We’re working on really specific prep for this particular course and for what the Games is going to be like. The course in Paris is quite unique in that we’re actually swimming in the Seine river, so we’ve been swimming in rivers in Manitoba to get used to that feeling of swimming into the current,” she said.

The terrain will also be different during the handcycle and (wheelchair) run portions of the competition.

“Obviously, it’s an old city, so about half of the bike course is going to be on (cobblestone). So, we’ve been trying to prepare to make sure we can keep the cadence really high so that we can maintain momentum while we’re bouncing around a bit on the cobble.”

In many ways, it’s still unbelievable to Taylor that she’ll soon be an Olympian, given where she came from.

Her life was knocked off course a little more than six years ago when she was biking through the Bison Butte Trail in southwest Winnipeg. Despite riding a familiar trail, she hit an unexpected bump and gripped her brakes, which threw her over the handlebars.

An awkward landing caused a dislocation between the 10th and 11th thoracic vertebrae in her spine and left her paralyzed from the waist down.

Two months after her accident, while still being treated at Health Sciences Centre, Taylor was convinced by Paralympian Colin Mathieson to take a spin in a racing chair.

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She was intrigued by the challenge of a triathlon and quickly latched onto the sport during a trying time.

“I think it’s so rare that you say you’re going to set out to do something and it comes into play exactly the way that you had imagined,” Taylor said. “That’s kind of how I feel going into these Games is that all of the pieces have really fallen together at the right time and in the way that we imagined.

“So, as much as I’m nervous and excited to compete, I think the most exciting take home is we set out to do this and everything that we wanted has so far come true.”

joshua.frey-sam@freepress.mb.ca

X: @jfreysam

Joshua Frey-Sam
Reporter

Josh Frey-Sam reports on sports and business at the Free Press. Josh got his start at the paper in 2022, just weeks after graduating from the Creative Communications program at Red River College. He reports primarily on amateur teams and athletes in sports. Read more about Josh.

Every piece of reporting Josh produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.