Mel Pemble of Victoria, well on her way to becoming a rare athlete in both the Summer and Winter Paralympics, won the gold medal Friday and the rainbow jersey that goes with it in the women’s C3 scratch race at the 2022 UCI Para-cycling track world championships.
The 22-year-old Islander, who represented Canada in skiing at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Paralympic Games, set the world record Thursday in the C3 omnium 200-metre sprint.
“This is so surreal,” Pemble said in a statement about her rapid rise from skis to pedals.
“This is a goal I had maybe in two years time, maybe next year. For it to happen at my first world championships made it quite the day. I was really nervous today, so I’m glad it paid off.”
The world championships are taking place on the Vélodrome National de St-Quentin-en-Yvelines, which will host the track cycling events of the 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics, and to where Pemble is setting her sights in two years time.
“It was so unexpected,” she said.
Pemble was born with cerebral palsy and immigrated to the Island from Lancashire, England, with her family in 2009.
Her family thought it might be helpful for her to get into a physical activity and chose skiing. Pemble admits to being terrified the first time she looked down the slopes of Mount Washington.
She overcame her fear to win two gold medals in the B.C. Winter Games and then two medals as a 14-year-old at the 2015 Canada Winter Games in Prince George.
Three years later, she became a Paralympian as a teenager racing five events in Pyeongchang with two top-10 finishes followed by three top-five placings at the 2019 world Para-ski championships in Slovenia.
Pemble came to cycling through a Podium Search (now RBC Training Ground) try-out at PISE, where she was identified as a multi-sport threat beyond just skiing.
So she took to the still-functional 1994 Commonwealth Games velodrome at Juan de Fuca, which has produced the likes of 2012 London Olympics-medallist Gillian Carleton, Tokyo Olympics cyclist and Commonwealth Games medallist Jay Lamoureux and Pan Am Games-medallists Evan Carey and Erin Attwell, the latter a Paris 2024 Olympic hopeful.
Pemble has now added her name to that list.
