Greg Stewart in action at Saturday's Kamloops Throws Festival. The Kamloops native is preparing for the Paralympic Games in Tokyo, running Aug. 24 to Sept. 5 (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By Chad Klassen

2021 PARALYMPIC GAMES

Stewart keeping his eye on the podium as Paralympic Games near

Jun 7, 2021 | 1:32 PM

KAMLOOPS — Greg Stewart is three months away from living out a dream — throwing at the Paralympic Games in Tokyo.

Until then, he’s hunkered down in Kamloops training and getting himself ready to compete for gold.

“Just focusing on throwing. That’s my job right now,” he told CFJC Today. “I want to go to these Games. I think it’s going to be a great opportunity for myself and Canada to represent itself in these crazy, crazy pandemic times.”

While Stewart has already qualified, he took part in Saturday’s Kamloops Throws Festival — an Athletic Canada-sanctioned event and Olympic qualifier. It’s a rare opportunity for Stewart to get in reps in a real competition. He threw 15.80 metres — off from his personal best of 16.30 metres. However, with the Paralympic shot put event neither he nor his coach Dylan Armstrong are worried.

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“Thought it was a pretty good series. All of them are 15s. I haven’t thrown a consistent 15 in a while, so that was pretty nice,” Stewart said. “There are a lot of other guys that are throwing pretty far right now, but it’s still early. We have another three months to go. I think there’s still a lot of opportunities, so it’s just buckling down and focusing on the important part — and that is just getting in the gym, training, throwing far.”

The Olympics and Paralympics are going ahead, despite a lot of opposition from the Japanese public. On Monday (June 7), a national poll indicated that half the country doesn’t want the Olympics to happen.

Japan is currently under a COVID state of emergency. Cases have been declining in the last three weeks, but only three per cent of the population is fully vaccination — among the lowest rates in the world.

Stewart has been told the Games are a go and he’s preparing accordingly.

“I know a lot of Japan doesn’t want it to happen, but there’s also the political side of things and the money that’s put into it, so there’s that drive,” he noted. “But we’ve been training like this the last four or five years, so I don’t want it to not happen. I’ve been putting my heart and soul into it and it would be unfortunate if it didn’t happen.”

The Tokyo Games are already the most expensive Summer Olympics ever at nearly $16 billion. An extra $2.4 billion has been added onto the bill due to its postponement to 2021.

There won’t be any fans in attendance at this point and athletes will only be in Tokyo to compete. It’ll be a different Olympics and Paralympics without all the fanfare, and Stewart knows that.

“Right now, the discussion is Team Canada will go about two weeks before the Games, do a training camp in Gifu, just outside of Tokyo, and then get ourselves acclimatized. No fans. If there are fans, it’ll be just Japanese. We basically go in, compete, and fly home the next day. Not much to it.”