It will be the Bannister-Landy moment of the Tokyo Paralympics when Islanders Nathan Riech and Liam Stanley race in the T37-T-38 1,500 metres.
Roger Bannister beat John Landy in the Miracle Mile of the 1954 Vancouver Empire (now Commonwealth) Games in one of the greatest 1,500-metre battles in track history.
The Paralympics version will be run Saturday at 3:15 a.m. PT in Tokyo.
Victoria’s Stanley won silver in the 2016 Rio Paralympics. But the event has belonged to Riech since he came to the Athletics Canada Western Hub middle- distance training centre at PISE on the Camosun College Interurban campus.
Riech, the world record holder, won gold and Stanley silver in the 2019 Pan Am Paralympic Games in Lima, Peru. Riech then won gold at the 2019 world championships in Dubai while Stanley settled for fifth place. But Riech hasn’t forgotten who was the first Island star in the event.
“Liam [Stanley] inspires me,” Riech said following his world title in Dubai. “That dude is one of the toughest guys I have run against. He is going to be back in the Paralympics. Don’t be surprised if he is on the podium with me [at Tokyo 2020].”
Riech is coached by Heather Hennigar and Stanley by two-time Olympian Bruce Deacon, and train separately in Victoria.
Both Riech and Stanley have competed against able-bodied athletes, Riech during an NCAA track career at South Alabama.
Stanley suffered a stroke at birth and is partially paralyzed down the right side of his body. He was a standout at Glenlyon Norfolk School in able-bodied soccer, basketball and track and led GNS to two Colonist Cup high school soccer championship game appearances and three B.C. single-A titles. He was two-time Canadian para-soccer player of the year. When Canada failed to qualify for the 2016 Rio Paralympics in soccer, Stanley turned to track and won the silver medal at Rio 2016.
Riech was watching from the sidelines on a course in Arizona when he was hit on the head by an errant golf ball at age 10 and suffered a brain injury that affected the left side of his body with paralysis.
The dual citizen, who races as a Canadian, comes from a long and deep familial sporting background. Dad Todd Riech threw javelin for the U.S. at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and mom Ardin Tucker pole-vaulted to the Canadian title at the national trials for the 2000 Sydney Olympics and represented Canada at the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games.
Riech’s grandfather, Jim Harrison, played eight seasons in the NHL for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Chicago Blackhawks and Boston Bruins, and also in the WHA. Grandmother Elizabeth Harrison was a national-level equestrian rider.
Uncle Trevor Harrison is a former rugby player out of the Cowichan Valley who has been personal therapist and trainer for several NBA stars. Step-dad Ben Tucker was selected in the eighth round of the 1995 MLB draft by San Francisco and progressed to Double-A in the Giants’ chain.
“I want to use my platform to better the Paralympic movement,” Riech has said.
That platform may just be the podium in Tokyo.
cdheensaw@timescolonist.com
