Canada’s Chernove adds third medal of Paralympics, gold in cycling time trial

RIO DE JANEIRO — Canadian cyclist Tristen Chernove is at his best when he’s sailing along at 40 kilometres an hour under the soothing heat of the sun.

Life is about as close as it can be to perfect.

The 41-year-old from Powell River, B.C., roared to gold in the time trial on Wednesday, for his third medal of the Rio Paralympics, and one of five claimed by Canada’s cycling team on the day.

And in the moments after the victory, Chernove talked about how para-cycling is helping him adapt to the ravages of Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, and of that wonderful feeling of flying.

“It’s totally freeing,” Chernove said, with a wide grin. “Believe me, overcoming what some would consider limitations created by the disease is never on my mind. I’m just being an athlete, I’m just doing all I can.”

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Chernove raced to a time of 27 minutes 43.16 seconds to beat Ireland’s Colin Lynch, who was second in the C2 category in 28:02.25.

The Canadian, who remarkably just joined the national team last year, also has a pair of medals from the track: a silver in the 3,000-metre individual pursuit, and bronze in the 1,000-metre time trial.

Chernove’s victory kicked off a spectacular day in the time trial for Canada. Ross Wilson of Sherwood Park, Alta., captured silver in the C1 category for his second medal in Rio, Charles Moreau of Victoriaville, Que., took bronze in the H3 class, Calgary’s Michael Sametz took bronze in the men’s C3 event, and Shelley Gautier of Niagara Falls, Ont., was third in the combined C1 and C2 race.

Chernove was a competitive paddler who took up cycling after being diagnosed with CMT, a degenerative disease that affects the peripheral nerves and causes the muscles to atrophy. The same disease forced Canadian basketball player Todd McCulloch to retire from the NBA.

Cycling can’t stop the degeneration of his lower legs and lower arms, Chernove said — it’s the nature of the disease.

“I have to learn how to be OK with that,” he said. “However, psychologically, to be fitter than I’ve been in my whole life feels wonderful.

“And no body is perfect,” he added. “Every human’s body has ailments, especially at different times in life. It’s part of the human existence. I’m drawing strength from areas that are serving me really well. I’m finding ways to be very fast.

“Para-cycling is so wonderful because a lot of the fear I had with the disease has gone away, because no matter where my body goes with this disease, there is such incredible adaptation available with us as human beings, and I’ll just continue to adapt and I’ll always be fit and I’ll always be cycling.”

Wednesday’s course followed the shoreline in Pontal, one of Rio’s numerous beach neighbourhoods and the venue for both the cycling time trial and race walking at last month’s Olympics. Temperatures climbed to 30 C under a cloudless blue sky — ideal for Chernove.

“It’s the cold (that gives him trouble),” he said. “It’s just like electricity, my body has decaying wires. So the heat serves me quite well.”

A catastrophic bus crash in 2001, he said, has helped him deal with the hand he’s been dealt. He was driving a converted school bus in Mexico as part of an outdoor guiding course he was teaching, when the bus hit an uneven part of the pavement and veered off the road. He was pitched through the front window and broke his back.

He temporarily lost the use of the right side of his body.

“That was a little bit of a dry run for dealing with physical adversity, a little bit of a preparation, I guess, for what the future had for me,” Chernove said. “That’s the way i view it: the universe gave me a little practice session to wake me up to the realities of what’s important, so that I wouldn’t have so much trauma when I learned that I had CMT.

“And I had clarity on the beauty of life like I’d never had before. and I was just cherishing being alive like I had never felt before. That kind of happiness, you can’t recreate it.”

Wilson also has CMT, but a different form. The 34-year-old, who won silver in the 3,000 individual pursuit earlier in the Games, was 280 pounds when he was diagnosed five years ago. His doctor told him dealing with the disease would be significantly more difficult unless he lost some weight.

Wilson and couple of friends started a “biggest loser challenge,” and he lost 50 pounds in the first four months. Within in a year: 110 pounds.

“I thought ‘I don’t want to balloon back up’ and so I bought a bike because it always looked fun, and I watched the Tour de France, and I thought being 160 pounds, I could pull off the Spandex look,” said Wilson, who’s an accountant at Northern Alberta Institute of Technology in Edmonton.

Wilson’s neurologist told him there were two schools of thought on how best to combat the disease. One was take it easy, and don’t tax the nervous system — “If you don’t put a lot of wattage through the stereo cables, they don’t fry,” he said. 

“The other view, and the one that I subscribe to, is to accept the fact that your muscles are going to waste, your nerves are going to get worse. But right now, if you can build up that reserve and that ability, you do. if you imagine jumping off a cliff, I’d much rather jump off a very high cliff than very short cliff. It’s a much-longer-fall kind of idea.”

Cycling, Wilson said, allows him to better control of his life. He’s seen new muscle growth that’s allowed him to compensate. So while his calves become weaker, having stronger thighs allows him to walk still.

“I feel like if I was just going along with however it was, it would just be each day, I’d just slowly get worse. And I don’t like that.”

Lori Ewing, The Canadian Press

Note to readers: This is a corrected version of an earlier story. Chernove is not from Cranbrook, B.C., as previously stated, but Powell River, B.C.