March 24, 2008 (Callaghan Valley, B.C.) – The Vancouver 2010 Games will be her sixth winter Paralympics. She will be the grand dame of the team at forty-eight years of age in 2010, but don’t let your ridiculous preconceptions about age fool you. Colette Bourgonje – winner of eight Paralympic medals, and so many World Cup medals that Bourgonje can’t add them up – has never been faster. But then when wasn’t she fast?

In 1978 as a national level cross country runner she was a passenger in a vehicle on a lone gravel prairie road when the vehicle rolled several times, throwing her from the wreck and severing her spinal chord. “I was in critical condition,” says Bourgonje, who returned to Canada for the national championships at the 2010 Paralympic site after an incredible 200-7-08 world cup tour where she picked up one gold and four silver medals. But the past is not where this woman dwells.

“I have a passion for the sport,” says Bourgonje “passion to keep focused so I am at the top of my game in 2010. The twenty-year-olds are getting tougher,” she says with a Cheshire cat smile. It’s as if Bourgonje knows a secret that she is not letting the rest of us in on. “The young ones are tough, but this year I have been faster than I was in Torino.” In those games Bourgonje came home with two bronze in the 5km and 10 km events; this year she finished the season in second place overall in World Cup standings. Her results at the Canadian Championships speak only of speed. In the 5 km classic event she skied to a 19:41, which was also the second fastest time in the men’s race. The next day she won the 2.5 freestyle in12:22. She couldn’t compare that time with the men’s times as they competed over 7.5 km. Her .75 km free sprint time in her third race of 2:36 not only won the women’s event, but again put her in second place in the men’s race, less than 9 seconds back of Lou Gibson, the gold medalist.

Such consistent results came from years and years of hardcore training that can be very unpleasant. As a summer Paralympic athlete training for everything from the sprint to the marathon she found herself way too close to the pavement and to exhaust pipes in the middle of traffic. “Nordic skiing most simulates cross country running. I think it’s tougher than wheelchair racing. You’re in the woods, surrounded by nature, not a car in site. I just couldn’t take training on the road anymore in the summer with exhaust fumes everywhere, and nearly being hit or run over.”

As athletes continue on the Own the Podium path which hopes to land Canada in the top position overall at the 2010 Games, Bourgonje has worked on a meticulous training plan with Bruce Craven of the sports science program under the Saskatchewan Sports Medicine Council. “I’m on roller skis now in the summer,” says Bougonje “B2 Arrows. I can take them on gravel roads—it gives you the ability to pole better.”

Craven has worked with her since she was a summer athlete at the 2000 Sydney Games, but for the past three years that work has intensified as they tailor her program in the final year before the 2010 Games. “From testing we did last year Bruce and I decided that the best thing to do was more strength. I spend a lot more time in the weight room, the increase in weights is the biggest change to my training. I’ve also done an increase in my base training to somewhere between five to six hundred hours.”

Bourgonje works hard to balance her life. She is a part-time teacher at Fairhaven Elementary School and loves the kids there. “I think it’s important for athletes not to be all about themselves. You can get caught up in your own life and training—there’s a lot of taking involved. It matters that there’s a little bit of giving too.”

When she’s not on the skis, the roller skis, or in the classroom you can also find Bourgonje working to motivate others. “I was speaking to a group of women at Saskatoon City Hall and I told them about a friend who was running around with two kids, doing everything for everyone else and nothing for herself. If the head of a family is not happy—and I believe that moving your body makes you happy; it’s what bodies want to do—then the family won’t be as happy either. Attitude really is everything. Age is nothing. When you’re mind is into it, you’re into it. People underestimate our abilities. We limit ourselves by our attitude towards everything.”