Paralympic legend Brian McKeever prepares for his final Games

ROB MURRAY: I’m speaking with local Paralympic athlete Brian McKeever. You are heading to the Paralympics in Beijing. This will be your sixth Paralympic winter games. Is this kind of old hat for you now?

BRIAN MCKEEVER: It never really gets old, but experience will probably go a long way. I look back to 2002, my first games, and it was a unique experience in that sense because it was the first one. I was lucky to have Robin (McKeever) there who had been to an Olympics before. Progressively we’ve gotten better at this. We know what to expect and experience goes a long way at least in terms of comfort going in. It’s good when you have guys like me, Russell Kennedy, and Graham Nishikawa that have been to a lot of this stuff, and obviously Robin and the staff too that can help some of the new guys along. I think that’s really beneficial to bring the next generation up.

RM: You’re Canada’s most decorated winter Paralympian – 17 medals, including 13 gold. You’re, overall, one of Canada’s most successful athletes ever. You’re also 42 years old. You’re at an age where a lot of your contemporaries have retired from the sport of Nordic skiing. Do you still have gas left in your tank? How long do you figure you can do this for?

BM: Well, I just found out I have arthritis in my knees.

RM: Oh no!

BM: I used to think that age is a bit of a state of mind, but it’s definitely catching up. My body doesn’t recover the way it used to. It’s kind of hard to ignore the fact that I’m now racing against kids that are young enough to be my own kids, which is kind of a special thing. I still like beating the young guys, but I definitely don’t have the same speed that I used to. You try to get by with other things – more training, more endurance, hopefully better pacing, more experience. It’s trade-offs along the way, but every year it gets a little bit harder. This will be my last games, at least as an athlete. I’d like to be around for the next generation of guys that are coming up. We have an exciting team on the cross-country side. Almost everybody is living in Canmore. The Bow Valley is such a great place to train. When you see the commitment of these newer athletes that are willing to move to Canmore to get the training in…that’s inspiring for an old guy like me to see just how much they want it as well. I’m proud to still be a part of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3pbC74bf8E

RM: Something else inspiring was the Super Bowl ad. Not only was it just cool in general to have two Canmore athletes featured during the Super Bowl, but what an interesting, dramatic, 90 second snapshot of the lives of you and your brother Robin. What was it like watching that for you?

BM: The first time I saw it was quite emotional. I think it’s a testament to Toyota and the team that they put together, bringing that snapshot to life. You see your life distilled down to 90 seconds and a lot of these major events that they captured quite nicely. When it’s suddenly there in this concentrated form it hits pretty hard, especially for Robin and I who lived it. The production team did a really great job of capturing that emotion and they treated the stories with a lot of respect.

RM: How accurate was the family connection in that ad? I mean, have you and your brother grown up training together? Was that connection on the athlete side of things true?

BM: I would say yeah, especially when we were younger, you know, Robin trying to help me out a bit. There’s a snapshot missing, obviously, in the middle. Robin is six years older than me. By the time he’d moved out of the house at 16 to be a part of the national team, I was still a kid. There was a time there where the age gap is maybe a bridge too far, but once I hit 18 and was on the national team myself, and then we were training together a bit more, then through the diagnosis and beyond…cross-country, working together in that Paralympic world, we truly became brothers at that time, and best friends.

RM: Nordic skiing must run your family’s blood. It must be really cool to see your nephew Xavier tearing it up right now at the Nordic Junior World Ski Championships.

BM: Just the other day, the fastest classic leg in the relay! He’s better than Robin and I ever were. That next generation of kids coming up, Canmore/Calgary based, a few guys out of Quebec too, all that same sort of 18 to 23 years old. We saw them at the Olympics too with a couple of guys. These are big results and that bodes well for the future of the program. We’re in a rebuilding phase now since Alex (Harvey) retired. There’s been a bit of a vacuum and these kids are coming up to fill it, so that’s really great to see.

RM: Back to you and the Paralympics – do you have any personal goals going into these games?

BM: I’d like to try to enjoy it. That’s probably asking a lot because the games are never much fun while you’re there. They’re very stressful. We have a job to do and we’re going to try and do the best we can. I’ve never predicted medals and I won’t predict them now. I just hope to have the best that my old body can give. I think we’ve prepared well. We’re finishing up our prep here in Lake Louise with the final hits of altitude before we go into a very high venue. We’ve done this a lot and we know that it gets us close so I’m confident in the shape that we have going in, but the beauty and the pain of sport is that you have no control over what your competitors do. All you can hope for is the best day on that day, and whatever the result is, whatever the number is next to your name at the end of the day, that’s what you take. If somebody is faster than you, you just shake their hand and congratulate them because they beat you, and that’s fair.