Imagine the Medals

By Alison Cunningham, The Province (August 28, 1992)

The Paralympic Games haven't started yet, but wheelchair athlete Daniel Wesley says he's already won three gold medals.

His confidence isn't overblown arrogance. It's just part of his secret for success.

"You can make it happen if you visualize it," says Wesley, a double above-knee amputee. "I can handle anything in a race if I've already imagined it."

His formula must work. Wesley swept the 1988 Paralympics in Seoul, winning two golds, three silvers and a bronze medal.

"He's a perfect wheeling machine," agrees wheelchair athlete Rick Hansen. "If attitude is the main determinant," he should win.

Wesley, now 32, first met Hansen when Wesley was 13 and Hansen 15 and both were undergoing rehabilitation. Wesley had just lost his legs while hopping trains with other boys in Surrey.

"We started racing against each other down the halls of the Royal Columbian Hospital," Hansen says.

For now, Wesley's on a roll. He set a world record for the 100 metre race in Toronto last June and in April defeated the world record holder in England at London's prestigious ADT marathon.

He placed second last winter in the provincial championships of the Disabled Skiers Association and plays for a wheelchair basketball team that won its second straight provincial championship.

And he leaves Friday for Barcelona to compete in the 100, 200 and 400-metre wheelchair races and on the four-man relay teams.

Despite his confidence, Wesley admits he's nervous about competing in Barcelona.

"My palms are sweaty right now," he says, adding he is nursing a shoulder injury.

So why do it?

"Racing is really exciting at this level", Wesley says. "It's like building something, a process where you're never finished."

He practices transcendental meditation an hour each day to relax and credits his four-year-old daughter Anna-May as being his "source of inspiration."

Wesley, a Canada Post employee, also says the Paralympics allows him to "overcome the whole concept of being disabled, the concept of not being able to do something."

"He brings the message that athletes with disabilities are athletes first." Hansen adds.