By Frank Pingue
(Reuters) – Jacob Wasserman refused to let a bus crash that left him paralyzed end his dream of representing Canada at a major sporting event, and his resilience paid off as he was named on Thursday to the country’s rowing team for the 2024 Paralympics.
Wassermann, a former junior ice hockey goalie and survivor of the Humboldt Broncos bus crash in 2018 that was felt across Canada and beyond, will make his Paralympic debut in only his first full international season of competing.
“If the crash taught me anything it’s just to go with it,” Wassermann, 24, said during a video call with reporters after being named to Canada’s PR1 men’s single sculls for the Aug. 28-Sept. 8 Paris Paralympic Games.
“Life will sometimes throw you a curveball and what I’ve really learned is to just keep moving forward and keep pursuing the dreams that I had.”
Wassermann is one of 13 people who survived the crash in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan that killed 16 others, including 10 of his teammates and two coaches, when a transport truck collided with their vehicle.
The crash left Wassermann paralyzed from the waist down and left his dream of representing Canada at the highest level of sport hanging by a thread.
But the resilient Wassermann tried sledge hockey and adaptive water skiing before taking up rowing after it was recommended to him by a friend.
“I fell in love with it right away,” said Wassermann, who took up Para rowing in October 2022. “And it turned out that it came pretty naturally to me too.”
He has excelled during his brief time in the sport. At the 2023 national championships he won gold in his category. In March he won a silver in the PR1 single sculls race at the Continental Qualification Regatta in Rio de Janeiro.
Only the top finisher there earned a quota spot for their country for the Paralympic Games, but through quota reallocation Canada received a spot.
“I wanted to be professional athlete since when I was 2 years old basically and then the crash happened and hockey wasn’t the way I was going to go with it anymore, so I just kept going forward and training hard and eventually I fell into the sport that was meant for me,” said Wassermann.
“And here I am now able to represent Canada on the biggest stage. So the dream that I had from a very young age is still able to come true and it does feel a little bit surreal sometimes.”
Wassermann credited his quick progress in rowing to the work he put into the sports he has played all his life.
“I’ve been training for 24 years,” said Wassermann. “All that work I’ve done my whole life, whether it was a hockey player before, or since the crash all the other sports I’ve done and all the training I’ve done, it’s all gone into this sport.
“Once I started I just had to learn the techniques. I’ve been an athlete my whole life and that didn’t change … it worked out good for me. I fell into the right sport for me.”
(Reporting by Frank Pingue in Toronto; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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