Paralympian Kate O'Brien's unpredictable cycling journey

Kate O'Brien always imagined she'd wear the Maple Leaf again following her 2016 Olympic debut in Rio de Janeiro in women's cycling, but she had no forewarning of just how unique her return to international competition would become.

Sports had always been a central part of her life. "I remember playing kickball in the alley with my neighbors and I was always the kid whose mom would have to beg her to come inside," she said.

That interest transformed into a full-on obsession throughout her teenage years. O'Brien tried basketball, sprinting, hurdles, and then, while attending the University of Calgary, skeleton. "It wasn't about pretending or thinking that I was going to go to the Olympics or do anything like that," she said. "I just did it because I enjoyed it."

But as her interest in sports evolved, so did her ambitions. After narrowly missing the Olympic Games as a bobsleigh brakeman in 2014, she switched to cycling and qualified for the Canadian team in Rio, finishing eighth in the team sprint, and 13th and 14th in the keirin and individual sprint, respectively.

Her multi-sport ambitions were already enough of an anomaly, but O'Brien's story had another unexpected twist - a training accident on the track in Calgary in July 2017 left her with significant brain trauma that required her to relearn how to speak and walk.

She relearned how to ride a bike, too. After recovering from the injury, she represented Canada at the 2020 Paralympic Games in Tokyo, earning a silver medal in the 500-metre track time trial. On Thursday, she added a bronze in the same event, Canada's first medal of the Games.

Heading into this year's Paralympic Games in Paris as a member of Sobeys Feed the Dream program, O'Brien, now 36 and living in Langley, British Columbia, reflected recently on the journey that has made her one of the rare individuals to experience both sides of the Olympic movement.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

theScore: Do you remember the training accident that took place in 2017?

O'Brien: I have a video of the accident. It was very unexciting. Seeing that video, I'm, like, "Oh yeah, I kind of remember." But I don't actually remember that day. My two cousins and my mom, who had never seen me train, came to the track because I was in Calgary, and usually we were training in Ontario. We were going to go out for ice cream after, because it was the day after my birthday. I was going to do a talk afterwards, because it was an intro to the track day for a bunch of people. I'm sure the accident really helped them get interested in the track! I don't remember what happened. Seeing the video, I was lower pacing and my rear tire blew. I hit the pacing motorbike and that was that.

I imagine having something happen that you don't remember makes it that much harder to accept.

Yes, that is absolutely true. I've heard stories of how people remember it and it's so foreign to me because I still have a hard time believing that it happened. It would be a little bit more straightforward if I could say, "I remember I was riding and then all of a sudden hit my head and passed out."

When you first woke up, tell me about the moment you realized you were injured.

I remember waking up and being so confused as to why I was in the hospital. The last thing that I remember was being at the track, and then nothing. It took some time, probably a series of days to weeks, for me to understand what had happened and why I was there. I was really a problem-child patient because I desperately didn't want to be in the hospital.

It was really challenging to accept that I was there and that something had happened that caused me to need to be in the hospital. I was convinced that I was going to go to - I think it was the Commonwealth Games I was slated to go to before the injury. I was talking to coaches, and I didn't get why I was in the hospital. It was something that honestly took probably years afterward for me to accept. To be honest, I still kind of work on it. To understand that this injury did happen and as much as I like to pretend that everything is good, things have changed a bit.

After the injury, you said your whole goal was just to get back on a bike, just to have fun. But that's different from becoming a Paralympian. How did that transformation occur?

I was in rehabilitation for quite a long time. I was in the hospital for about three months, and then had at-home rehabilitation for speech and physical occupational therapy every day for three months. Then outpatient rehabilitation for a year and a half. There were some things I needed to work on to start with, like walking and speaking. Once I had achieved those things, I was, like, "OK, how about I just get back on a bike then?"

As a person who's very competitive, having something that I could hold on to - like the goal of riding a bike, even if it wasn't in competition - was important.

When I was finally cleared to ride a bike, I went out with my now wife and went on my first road ride. I don't even really know how to describe that feeling. You don't know what you have until it's gone. Being able to get on a bike and just ride around the block was very similar to going back to when I was a kid and played basketball, being in the backyard, in the snow, and just shooting hoops because I loved it. Being able to be back on that bike, riding outside, was so good. From there, I started to say that I would really like to just get back on the track, even if it's not competition. I went to the track in the Velodrome in Vancouver and rode around there, and it was amazing.

Then I thought, there's provincial competitions. Maybe I could register for those. So, I started doing that. I competed in able-bodied before switching to para. I went to able-bodied nationals in Milton (Ontario), which is the hub for the sprint team for track cycling, and ended up getting a couple of medals there.

I was offered a spot back on the able-bodied team, which was amazing. Unfortunately, I have post traumatic epilepsy from the head injury, and I had a seizure. So, they kind of took a step back. I was a little bit heartbroken.

I reached out to the para team, and they welcomed me with open arms. I don't think that I've ever been part of a team that was that welcoming in any of the sports that I've been part of. It's been amazing to be part of the exact same sport and the exact same event in able-bodied as an Olympian and in para as a Paralympian.

Para athletes are just as good, if not more impressive, in some ways, than able-bodied athletes. And it's a real community in para sport. Nations support each other significantly more than they did in able-bodied sport.

Having gone to the Games on both sides, what is the biggest difference between the experiences?

I think there is this vibe of togetherness (at the Paralympics). That said, as in any high-performance sport, there's also a lot of the competitive nature of people.

At the Paras, you're not looked at as Kate O'Brien, the injured athlete. You're seen as Kate O'Brien, the athlete who happens to have an injury. You're just seen as a human being rather than anything else. In the same way, in able-bodied sport, I often found I was seen for what I had won or lost rather than who I was as a person. In Para, you're still striving for success, but I would say that you're a person before those labels.

What are your expectations for Paris?

I've been on the track in Paris, and it's outstanding. Coming from Tokyo, where there weren't any spectators, it would just be amazing to have people there. My wife, son, mom, dad and mother-in-law are all coming and have tickets booked. As hokey as it sounds, I'm looking forward to competing and being hyper-competitive like I am, but being able to share that experience, and that Olympic spirit, in a way that hasn't been possible for a number of years.

Jolene Latimer is a feature writer at theScore.