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Two years after tragedy, he earned a world record

Curtis Halladay could not have envisioned the heights to which he would climb in such short order. But he sure as heck knew he wasn’t about to let life keep him down.
Curtis Halladay could not have envisioned the heights to which he would climb in such short order. But he sure as heck knew he wasn’t about to let life keep him down.

“It’s a low, you’re going to come right back up,” said the 20 year-old world record holder. “I knew that I wasn’t just going to end my sporting career there.”

Flashback to May 2012. Halladay was an avid motorcross racer, riding since he was eight and racing by the age of 10.

Halladay was at a race on Manitoulin Island when it happened.

“I was coming around a corner and my foot slipped off the foot peg,” he recalled. “I didn’t have time to correct before the jump, so I hit it all off-balance.

“It launched me over the bike and I took all the impact of the fall on my butt.”

The result: a dislocated hip and severed sciatic nerve, the latter of which essentially paralyzed his left leg below the knee.

Out of commission for three months, Halladay returned to the gym, partly to complete his rehab and partly to stay active. His upper body training and tall physique attracted the attention of of Thomas Hums, a crossover athlete who was training some Laurentian University rowers. In Halladay, Hums saw what LU coach Amanda Schweinbenz was looking for, and made the introduction.

“I was pretty excited to start a sport again,” sais Halladay, a sport and physical education student.

In March 2014, Halladay began a scaled-down training regimen that Schweinbenz believed could lead the athlete all the way to the Row the Podium program. The partnership produced results. Quickly.

This past February, Halladay set a new world record in the Para Rowing LTA-PD event at the Canadian Indoor Rowing Championships in Mississauga with a 1,000-metre time of 2:56.6, a clocking that he would better again in Boston in March (2:56.1).

This sumer will be Halladay’s second on the water, but his sights are set on the 2016 Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro.

His rapid ascension has been nothing short of astounding.

“I can’t say exact numbers for sure,” Halladay said about how fast he thinks he can go. “As long as I’m putting in all the hours ... that’s all I can do.”

For an athlete like Curtis Halladay, it’s only natural to tackle every challenge life might send his way head on, no matter how daunting that challenge might be.

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