OTTAWA - Midale's Keely Shaw has been named to Canada's Para cycling team for the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, the Canadian Paralympic Committee and Cycling Canada announced Monday.
"Track and road cyclist Keely Shaw is now an established star in the women’s C4 Para cycling category on both the track and the road," states her bio on the Canadian Paralympic page.
She won a bronze medal in the women’s individual pursuit at the Tokyo Paralympic Games in 2021. She was the only athlete from Saskatchewan to win either an Olympic or Paralympic medal in Tokyo, and she was the first Canadian athlete to win a medal at the Tokyo Paralympics.
Her efforts earned her the Sask Sport Female Athlete of the Year Award for 2021 – the second time she has won the honour.
At the 2024 Para cycling world track championships, she won the bronze medal in the women’s C4 3,000-metre individual pursuit. On the road World Cup circuit, the highlight was a bronze in a road race at the second stop in Belgium.
Last year, at the combined road and track worlds, she took silver in the individual pursuit and bronze in the road time trial. At the Para Pan Am Games a few weeks later, she was crowned the individual pursuit champion.
Her first major international success was a silver in the individual pursuit at the 2019 world track championships.
Shaw was involved in a horse-riding accident in 2009 at age 15 that left her with partial paralysis on her left side. She became a Para cyclist in 2016, entered her first cycling road race in 2017, was invited to a Cycling Canada camp that same year, and then won two medals at the national championships.
While at the Paris Paralympics, Shaw will race in the track events, taking place from Aug. 29-Sept. 1 at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines velodrome just outside of Paris. The road events will take place Sept. 4-7, starting and finishing in Clichy-Sous-Bois, with Shaw also set to compete.
Charles Moreau, Kate O’Brien and Mike Sametz are previous Paralympic medallists also on the Para Cycling team. Nathan Clement, Mel Pemble and Alexandre Hayward will also cycle for Canada.
At the 2023 world championships in Scotland, these athletes combined to win nine medals, and last fall at the 2023 Para Pan Am Games in Santiago, Canadian Para cyclists won 12 medals
Qualification slots for Canada for the Games were earned through cumulative results at world championships and World Cup events in 2023 and 2024.
The Paris 2024 Paralympic Games will take place from Aug. 28-Sept. 8. Canada is expecting to send a team of approximately 130 athletes.
