Colette Bourgonje had just launched into a comment about having known where her fellow competitors were on the course when she paused and asked her interviewers about the margin between her and the next competitor in Thursday's (March 18) women's sitting five-kilometre race at Whistler Paralympic Park.
She said she hadn't yet seen the results. All she knew was that her race was good enough to land her on the podium for the second time at the 2010 Paralympic Winter Games, the 10th medal of her illustrious winter and summer Paralympic career.
When told that fourth-place finisher Olena Iurkovska of Ukraine finished just one-tenth of a second behind her, the bronze medalist leaned back in her wheelchair and let out a hearty laugh.
"I'm very grateful to have this medal, I'll tell you," the 48-year-old Saskatoon school teacher said, drawing chuckles from those around her.
Bourgonje, competing in her sixth and final Paralympic Winter Games, finished the race in a disability-adjusted time of 15 minutes, 16.4 seconds, 23 seconds behind gold medalist Liudmila Vauchok of Belarus and 7.2 seconds behind silver medalist Andrea Eskau of Germany.
Bourgonje, who also captured the silver medal in the women's sitting 10 km race on Sunday (March 14), commented after that race that being an athlete is more of a state of mind than a stage of life.
"Age is nothing. Attitude is everything. I believe in that," she said.
Bourgonje, who planned to compete in Sunday's (March 21) sprint race and perhaps in Saturday's (March 20) all-classes relay, was a high-level competitive cross-country runner before she was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident in 1980. After discovering wheelchair sports and sit-skiing, she began competing again in the early 1990s and has now competed in three summer and six winter Paralympic Games.
Facing the end of that high-level competitive career, she said she has a strong desire to give back to the sports she loves and especially help disabled young people develop their athletic abilities to the fullest.
Bourgonje, who moved to Canmore, Alta., to train for her final Paralympic Games, said she has talked to Canmore-based Olympic gold medalist Chandra Crawford about adding a disabled component to Crawford's Fast and Female camps, which seek to empower young women in sport and in life.
She said she, her partner and her dog Muskwa - whom she called "my best training partner" - plan to move back to the Saskatoon area and be involved in sport development programs, she said.
Bourgonje said she hopes one legacy of the 2010 Paralympics will be a surge in grassroots sport programs for disabled youth in Canada.
"I think I need challenges to be happy," Bourgonje said. "I look forward to skiing with school kids and especially those with physical and developmental disabilities.
"In Rick Hansen's book Man in Motion there's a quote that, 'The end is just the beginning,' and I really believe that."
