One of the biggest stars in wheelchair rugby is Paralympic bound for the third time.
Holy Trinity Academy graduate Zak Madell is set for Tokyo armed with experience and perspective after Team Canada named its roster for the 2020 Paralympic Games.
“I’m very excited, especially with the fact the Games are even happening at this point,” Madell said. “There was so much uncertainty around that, last year around the time we were qualifying and when Canada was talking about pulling out.
“Then with the fact it was postponed and it still gives us the opportunity to compete is more than we could have asked for.”
Though international competition has been at a minimum over the past 16 months, the national squad has been centralizing in Ontario for a couple training camps.
“I think we’re very well prepared,” he said. “This is the most I’ve personally felt prepared for a Paralympics and I think the team is looking very good heading into these Games.”
Entering his third straight Games, Madell looks to continue to lead Canada’s offensive attack.
At the 2012 Games in London, he was a breakout star despite being less than two years into his rugby career.
Madell and Canada upended the favoured Americans in the semifinal and won silver in London with the Okotokian pacing the offence with a team-best 68 goals.
Firmly on the international scene, Madell continued his success by guiding Canada to a gold medal at the Parapan Am Games in 2015 and earned the honour as the flagbearer for the closing ceremonies in Toronto.
At the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro, Madell and Team Canada finished fourth.
“For preparation, a lot it is going to be the same where it’s just a lot of hard work the last couple months getting the body’s ready,” he said.
“But we’ve also been doing a really good job coming out of COVID with hopefully a couple tricks up our sleeve and we’ve had that extra year to work on some of our weaknesses and turn them into strengths.
“Hopefully we can bring some things to the table that other teams might not be prepared to see.”
Zak Madell noted enjoying the Paralympic experience is a major goal of his in his third Games.(Bogetti-Smith Photography)The 27-year-old briefly retired from the sport, focusing on his studies as an architectural technology student at SAIT.
“I’m super glad I made the decision to come back, I’ve been enjoying rugby again,” said Madell, a member of the Holy Trinity Academy Athletics Wall of Fame.. “I’ve been having fun with having the opportunity to travel the world and play this crazy game that I get to call my job.
“Once I finished school I wanted to take some time off so I had something after rugby to fall back on and make sure I was prepared for life outside of rugby.
“But at the same time going to school and sitting at a desk for that long made me realize I wasn’t ready to hang up the old skates for good. I wanted to go back and take one more shot at this. Now I think it puts my mind at ease knowing that if I injure myself or anything, I’ve got something beyond rugby to fall back on.”
He picked up where he left off in his return to rugby, producing a tournament best 17.8 points per game average at the 2019 Parapan Am Games and was a key cog in Canada’s qualification through the Paralympic qualifying tournament in 2020.
“I’m going to take this moment and enjoy it as much as possible,” Madell said of Tokyo. “There’s a lot of pressure on teams and us to perform well, and obviously there still is, but I feel like I’ve missed out on enjoying the whole Paralympic experience to the extent that I could have in the past.
“It’s definitely going to be a different time this year considering I don’t think there’s going to be spectators, the COVID protocols will make it interesting.
“But really I want to go and make sure we’re enjoying ourselves and I think that could translate into us being successful on the court.”
Madell is one of nine members of the squad with Paralympic experience, including seven who have been with the program since the 2012 Games.
Canada will also feature a trio of athletes — Eric Furtado-Rodrigues, Anthony Létourneau and Shayne Smith — debuting on the Paralympic stage in Tokyo.
The only Albertan on the roster, Madell has gotten more than accustomed to training individually over the pandemic.
“Luckily I’ve trained kind of solo for a lot of my career, most of my career I’ve been the lone national team athlete in Alberta training,” he said. “Training solo is nothing new for me, with COVID, not being able to access some of the facilities at times, I had to find some new ways to train, get creative and figure out how to do makeshift home workouts.
“That’s also nothing new for me.”
As the lone Alberta-based player on the roster, Zak Madell has become accustomed to individual training. (Bogetti-Smith Photography)Canada kicks off its Pool B action against Great Britain on Aug. 25 with perennial power the United States and New Zealand to follow in round-robin play.
The fifth-ranked team in the world, Canada most recently put forth a silver medal performance at the 2019 Parapan Am Games and were fourth at the 2018 World Championships.
The Canadians also got the opportunity to travel to Japan to take on the reigning world champions and get a trial run through the exhaustive travel process.
Following a staging camp in Vancouver, Madell and Team Canada will depart for Japan on Aug. 17 and have a week to get acclimated.
The 2020 Tokyo Paralympic Games run from Aug. 24 to Sept. 5.
