Track cyclist Mel Pemble of Victoria never expected to be standing on the top of the podium at the 2023 Para Pan Am Games in Santiago, Chile, especially in her secondary event.
But the 23-year-old came through to win the gold medal this weekend in the women’s C1-3 3,000-metre individual pursuit in a Games record time of four minutes, 10.103 seconds.
It followed up Pemble’s silver medal in the C1-5 individual time trial from earlier in the Games and likely has set her on her way to Paris 2024 and becoming a rare Summer and Winter Paralympian.
“I feel really surprised. The individual pursuit is not my best event, to be honest,” Pemble said in a statement.
She qualified second behind Jamie Renee Whitmore of the U.S. to make the final and then all those kilometres spent training on the 1994 Commonwealth Games velodrome in Colwood came to the fore.
“I wasn’t super-happy with my [qualifying] performance with the time that I got and I knew I had more in me,” said Pemble.
“It made the battle even sweeter in the final, in terms of having nothing to lose, and I went out with a really good plan and everything that could have happened, happened. I had to kick it off a notch in the last kilometre and it paid off.”
Pemble edged Whitmore in the final by a razor-thin margin of 0.109 seconds.
Pemble, who was born with cerebral palsy and immigrated with her family to Victoria from Lancashire, England, in 2009, also skied on Mount Washington while growing up and made it to ski in the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Paralympics. The all-rounder turned to cycling on the velodrome in Colwood and now sets her sights on the velodrome track for the 2024 Paris Summer Paralympics.
The 2023 Para Pan Am Games conclude today in the Chilean capital with Island athletes having won six medals, a gold and five silvers, through Pemble, and Trevor Hirschfield of Parksville and Byron Green of Merville in wheelchair rugby, and Victoria runners Liam Stanley and Michael Barber in track.
Canadian co-captain Hirschfield and fellow veteran player Green rolled to the podium with silver medals after the 57-51 loss in the final that earned for the Americans the automatic berth into the 2024 Paris Paralympics.
It was the latest chapter of the searing and enduring Canada-U.S. rivalry that featured in the 2005 Academy Award nominated documentary Murderball. Hirschfield, Green and their Canadian teammates must now go through the last-chance qualifier next year to get to Paris.
The silver medal added to the Hirschfield’s career collection. The 40-year-old Ballenas Secondary graduate competed in the 2008 Beijing, 2012 London, 2016 Rio and 2020 Tokyo Paralympics with silver and bronze medals. The former Oceanside hockey player and BCHL Junior A prospect with the Cowichan Valley Capitals, before a van accident in 2000 while visiting his grandparents in Sicamous left him paraplegic, also has gold and silver medals from the 2015 Toronto and 2019 Lima Para Pan Am Games.
Green, 39, a civil engineer and veteran of the 2016 Rio and 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, added Santiago silver to his gold medal from the 2015 Toronto Para Pan Am Games.
Green turned to wheelchair rugby after a crash while mountain-biking in Cumberland during his senior year at Courtenay G.P. Vanier Secondary.
Stanley is another Para Games-decorated Islander. His silver medal in the men’s T38 1,500 metres in Santiago added to his 1,500-metre silver medal at the 2016 Rio Paralympics and 1,500-metre silver and 800-metre bronze at the 2019 Lima Para Pan Am Games. The former B.C. high school champion Glenlyon Norfolk Secondary able-bodied soccer star, who had a stroke at birth that rendered the right side of his body partially paralyzed, was also a finalist in the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics behind fellow Victorian and 1,500-metre gold medallist Nate Riech.
St. Michaels University School graduate Barber, who lives with autism, took silver in the men’s T20 1,500 metres in the Santiago Para Pan Am Games. Barber is the son of former Canadian international Gary Barber, who ran in the Commonwealth Games and now co-coaches his son with two-time Olympic marathoner turned-coach Bruce Deacon.
A team of 140 athletes, including competition partners, represented Canada at the 2023 Santiago Para Pan Am Games.
Brazil led the medals table with 286 in total, including 132 golds. Canada was eighth with 40 medals, including eight golds.
