DORIAN GEIGER
Sports Editor

WHISTLER – After the 1998 Nagano Olympics, the City of Saskatoon decided to name a few streets after Saskatchewan’s finest athletes in celebration of their athletic triumphs on the world stage.

Canadian Paralympic sit-skier Colette Bourgonje is one of these amazing athletes.

Twelve years later, Bourgonje, 48, should have the entirety of 8th Street renamed after her in light of her impressive performance at the 2010 Paralympics in Vancouver. Making history is an important thing, you know.

Bourgonje won silver on March 14 for the 10-kilometre cross country sit-ski event, Canada’s first medal on home soil in the history of the Paralympics. And on March 18, Bourgonje captured her second medal of the 2010 Paralympics, a bronze in five-kilometre cross-country sit-ski at Whistler’s Olympic Park.

The shiny piece of hardware marked Bourgonje’s second medal of the Vancouver Paralympics and her 10th all-time over the course of her five Winter Paralympics and four Summer Paralympics.

Prior to Bourgonje’s bronze medal at the 2010 Games, a StarPhoenix story quoted Bargonje saying that Paralympic sit-skiing was kind of like Saskatchewan — people just fly over it.

A prominent figure of Saskatchewan’s sit-skiing scene for well over a decade, Bourgonje hopes her and Canada’s first Paralympics medal encourages more Saskatonians to be active during winter months.

“I really hope Saskatchewan athletes start to embrace winter sport,” said a beaming Bourgonje, who teaches physical education part-time in Saskatoon.

Bourgonje, is from Porcupine Plains, Sask. She suffered a severe spinal cord injury in 1980, a debilitating blow that left Bourgonje with the loss of her legs. Sit-skiing was a way for Bourgonje to transition into a new way of life while remaining healthy and competitive.

“What it did for me was increase my quality of life. As an able-bodied athlete I was outside all the time and I didn’t know that skiing existed and when I found it I was like, ”˜right on!’ I love to be outside and that’s what really increased my quality of life and skiing with my dogs,” said Bourgonje.

Sometimes it’s the smallest pieces of the puzzle that indirectly contribute to an athlete’s medal. Bourgonje credits her dog Muska as her number one training partner and a key reason for her medal victories.

“My dogs have helped me get onto the podium — I mean you might laugh at that! That got me started, got me going out every day because you look at those brown eyes and you know what they want to do. They don’t want to sit on the couch.”

Bourgonje is proud of her prairie heritage but living in Saskatoon presented a problem since her prairie surroundings lacked an important portion of her training regiment — the mountains. Temporarily moving westward to Canmore, Atla., to train in the mountains on a daily basis seemed to be a strategically necessary remedy.

“I come from Saskatoon. I’m developed in Saskatchewan. I moved to Canmore because I knew I needed the altitude and needed the mountains and it has definitely made me tougher. Whatever doesn’t kill you make you stronger — I truly believe that,” stated Bourgonje, clearly proud of her prairie home.

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photo: Robby Davis