Canada’s husband and wife sailing duo poised for Paralympic medal

RIO DE JANEIRO — Their sailing support team is large and varied, and includes a marriage counsellor and their dog Zephyr.

Canadian couple John McRoberts and Jackie Gay are in silver-medal position heading into Saturday’s final race of sailing’s SKUD class at the Rio Paralympics, and their marriage, so far, seems to have weathered the week.

“Nearly there, one more race,” Gay said, with a laugh.

Canada’s Sonar team of Paul Tingley, Logan Campbell and Scott Lutes is third heading into their last race.

McRoberts and Gay married in 2010, but are making their first Paralympic appearance together — and sadly their last, as sailing has been removed from the program for the 2020 Games in Tokyo.

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The couple thought long and hard before agreeing to team up.

“Wouldn’t you second-guess sailing with your partner?” McRoberts asked.

The Victoria couple enlisted the help of a sports psychologist and marriage counsellor, plus they have a photo of their Eurasian dog Zephyr — also the name for a gentle, westerly breeze — pinned up on the boat.

“He makes us both smile, so whenever we’re grumpy we just look at Zephyr and we both smile,” Gay said.

The two are ideally suited for the SKUD class, which requires one member to be of high level of disability, and the other more mobile. The 54-year-old McRoberts, who’s been a quadriplegic since diving into shallow water at the age of 18, is the brains. He steers the boat and is the decision-maker.

The 53-year-old Gay is “the brawn, she’s the gas pedal,” McRoberts said.

Gay was driving with her previous husband in Cameroon when a landslide sent their Land Rover careening over a cliff. Gay lost her left leg in the crash.

Despite being perfect sailing partners, “we had to think about it,” Gay said. “We’re a good match, but it’s a risk, because it’s such an intense thing you’re putting yourselves through.”

“First five minutes after a race, there might be a few words shared,” McRoberts added. “That happens with any team. And then you realize that you have to spend the rest of your life together too, and you go ‘OK, I might have to apologize for something I said there.’”

“It’s been a life lesson. Or 20,” Gay laughed.

The week has been bittersweet for all the Canadian sailors in what is essentially sailing’s Paralympic swan song. There is a chance it might be reinstated for 2024.

“But that will still change the whole flow of the sport, the funding stops for a lot of the countries, and therefore, it’s going to be building it all up again from scratch,” said McRoberts, who won gold in 1996 and bronze in 2008. “Canada is lucky, they’ve had the same old dogs doing it from the beginning. I was at the first Games (in 1996), and now the last Games. We’re just trying to enjoy every minute of it.”

Added Gay: “It’s going to be a killer.”

The two, which finished second in Race 9 on Friday and sixth in Race 10, are soaking up the experience at the athletes village, which they fondly call “the circus.”

“I was talking to our therapists who are able-bodied and they’re a minority and they feel odd,” McRoberts said. “The roles are reversed. So it’s kind of cool being the norm, and it’s cool to see all the different shapes and sizes that are out there. We all inspire each other.”

In the Sonar class, the Canadians were seventh in Race 9, running into trouble with the tricky current in Rio’s Guanabara Bay. They roared back to finish second in Race 10, to put themselves back into podium position.

The trio is sailing with a 1942 Canadian dime positioned at the bottom of their mast, given to them by friend Greg Mills in the Nova Scotia port town of Lunenberg, where they were training. Canadian dimes, of course, feature the Bluenose, the famous fishing and racing schooner built in Nova Scotia in 1921. Mills’ great uncle had fished off the Bluenose before he was lost at sea. 

“It’s kind of a luck thing, a good harbinger,” said Lutes, who’s from Montreal. “I’ll take a good harbinger any time. (The Bluenose) never lost a race, so it is a nice connection.”

The dime, Tingley said, part tongue-in-cheek, is the “centrepiece of our boat, so it’s like strength is radiating out through it.”

Tingley, who was paralyzed in a ski accident when he was 24, is making his fifth and final Paralympic appearance. He won gold in 2008 and bronze in 2000.

He hasn’t thought much about the last page of his Paralympic story, “but sometimes you catch yourself thinking ‘Oh my god, this will be the last time I’ll ever see this person in this instance,’ and so it’s a little bit kind of heartwarming and sad at the same time,” said the 54-year-old from Halifax. 

“It’s a bittersweet thing. We’re all making the most of it.”

The sailors will learn in 2018 whether the sport will be reintroduced for 2024.

Lori Ewing, The Canadian Press