“It was certainly our favourite tournament to come to play wheelchair basketball back when I was just a little runt.”
So says Canadian para-hockey legend Billy Bridges—a six-time Paralympian—of his first experiences at the Défi Sportif AlterGo, almost 30 years ago.
“It was just always perfectly run and set up it was something we never had to worry about, and the athletes were so well taken care of” he recalls.
This year, Bridges was back at the Défi Sportif AlterGo for the first time in many years to take part in the Canadian Wheelchair Curling Championships with Shauna Petrie’s Ontario team.
The journey to curling
Billy Bridges has only been competing in curling for 2 years, but the sport has always interested him.
“I was the only one in my family who really grew up watching curling, I always loved it, I always was a big fan of it and I didn’t really know the avenues to compete.”
When Bridges met wheelchair curlers in the Olympic villages, they only served to increase his respect for the sport.
Later, when Bridges decided to take a step back from para-hockey, he realized he needed a new social activity, and a chance encounter with a neighbour who curled led him to finally take up the sport. Today, he plays in 3 different leagues, in both wheelchair curling and regular curling.
What he likes most about curling is what he also liked most about para-hockey: the social side, and being part of a team. “Any team that I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of has just been incredible”
Bridges only recently joined Shauna Petrie’s Ontario wheelchair curling team, and they had to work hard to qualify for the Défi Sportif AlterGo’s Canadian Wheelchair Curling Championships. He is therefore savouring every minute of it.
“A lot of my heroes are here, its fun to be able to share the ice with them and learn from them and skipping and being able to converse with the other skips, it’s been an awesome learning experience.”
Reaping the benefits
Billy Bridges progressed so quickly in para-hockey that he never had the opportunity to play it at the Défi Sportif AlterGo, which in recent years has hosted the national development team for match-ups between Canada and the USA. He is nevertheless gratified to see the event’s contributions to the career development of young players.
“I do appreciate that it did help in give those athletes an avenue to compete. In the development team it’s hard to get those experiences and to make it to the next level and being able to have their games here… I mean were reaping the benefits of it now, many many of those players that competed in Défi sportif AlterGo on the development team are now on the national team and maybe that wouldn’t have happened without it.”
This week, as he returned to the Défi Sportif AlterGo for the first time since he played in his beloved tournaments as a youth, Bridges was thrilled to see that the event has only grown.
“It’s incredible to go full circle and come back to it this much later in a completely different sport and see that it’s done nothing but thrive and get so much bigger and so much better. I love it.”
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