Mathieson back on track

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This article was published 16/07/2018 (2802 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A podium comeback at the Canadian Track and Field Championships has renewed Colin Mathieson’s drive after a serious kidney infection nearly spelled the end to the Paralympian’s 30-year career.

Earlier this month, Mathieson placed first in a field of seven competitors in the 100-metre T54 wheelchair race with a time of 15.54, and first in the 200-metre T54 event with a time of 27.01.

At the Ottawa meet, Mathieson recorded his second-fastest times of the year, as the 39-year-old from Tuxedo has slowly re-entered elite competition.  

In the fall of 2016, Mathieson was rushed to the emergency room where physicians treated him for an infected kidney stone that had led to sepsis. Mathieson underwent surgery to treat the infection and was prescribed at least six months bed rest — which turned into a year-and-a-half away from training, work, and the track — as he recovered.

“Anytime you leave stuff behind, when you come back there’s a huge deficit,” Mathieson told The Sou’wester. “There was a physical deficit for my training, a financial deficit being off work, and losing just a lot of momentum.”

Mathieson has been racing since 1989 and has attended four Paralympics, earning a bronze medal with the 4×400-metre men’s relay team at the 1996 Paralympics in Atlanta. He’s also attended numerous national and international championships over three decades.

Coming back to competition was not an easy decision for the full-time social worker. Mathieson said it would have been easier to quit racing and focus on his family and career after losing a year to the diagnosis, but felt he had a few loose ends to tie up first.

“I think it was a little bit of stubbornness and mainly not letting what happened finish me,” Mathieson said. “I didn’t let it finish me in a life or death scenario, so I also didn’t want to let it finish me on the track.

“I didn’t like the way that I left it. It felt like an unfinished chapter of a book,” he added.

Once doctors cleared him for training, Mathieson said he got back into the gym this January and took his time to rebuild.

“I wanted to come back and I had a lot of apprehension and a lot of anxiety about coming back because I didn’t know what kind of shape I was going to come back in,” Mathieson said.

Though the veteran racer said he felt like a rookie lining up at the national championship, Mathieson was pleased with his performance in front of a crowd of 2,500 (and given the context, a more nerve wracking prospect than the 110,000 in attendance at the London Paralympics, he admitted).

“Considering I was absolutely terrified on the start line, I think it went just fine,” he said. “Canada has always had a really strong team, so the idea of being the fastest in Canada is certainly a good reference for how far I’ve come this year and how I compare to the rest of the world,” he said.  

Mathieson is currently ranked first in the country by Athletics Canada in both the 100- and 200-metre T54 events and he has his sights set on competition at the IAAF World Championships in Qatar in 2019, and the summer Olympics in Tokyo in two years time.