Local Athlete Lands in Tokyo For the 2021 Paralympics To Bring Back Gold
/It was a long plane ride from Canada to Japan but Paralympian Cody Caldwell has arrived safely on Wednesday to compete in the Tokyo 2021 Paralympic Games.
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Caldwell confirmed on his Instagram that he made it safely to the Paralympic village on the Harumi waterfront district of Tokyo after leaving Canada on Tuesday.
“Late night arrival to the village but we made it,” he said on an Instagram post.
He is representing Team Canada in wheelchair rugby in his second Paralympics. His last appearance in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil earned a fourth-place finish in 2016.
The Paralympics was originally scheduled for 2020 but was postponed one year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Caldwell is not the only family member on the trip as his father serves as the “jack of all trades” for the team.
“It’s a huge honour to be able to go with him and he’s pretty much drove us to hockey growing up and he’s drove us to any sport that we wanted to play,” explained Caldwell. “Now he gets to experience it from inside the ropes. It’ll be really cool for him and myself.”
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The team has three scheduled round-robin games in Group B. The United States, Great Britain and New Zealand are the three other teams in Canada’s bracket.
The top two teams will advance to the semifinals to play against the other top countries in Group A —which consists of Australia, Denmark, France and Japan —in a single-elimination playoff round.
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The following is Team Canada’s wheelchair rugby schedule:
Aug. 25 vs. Great Britain
Aug. 26 vs. United States
Aug. 27 vs. New Zealand
