Katarina Roxon of Team Canada competes in the women's 100m breastroke at Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games on Aug. 26, 2021 in Tokyo.Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images
Katarina Roxon doesn’t mind when fellow members of Canada’s Paralympic swimming team call her “grandma.”
“I take it as an endearing term,” she says. “I wear it like a crown.”
A loquacious Newfoundlander whose chatter is punctuated by laughter, Roxon is 31, and the oldest member of the 22-person team. As of Aug. 29, she will compete in Paris at her fifth Paralympics, the most by any Paralympic swimmer in Canadian history.
In 2008 in Beijing she was 15 and the team’s youngest swimmer. On Tuesday she and wheelchair basketball player Patrick Anderson were named Canada’s flag-bearers for Wednesday’s opening ceremony.
“It is a huge opportunity and privilege,” Roxon said Tuesday during a video call from Paris. “It is something I don’t think I will ever forget. It is a huge surprise and a lot of emotions were mixed in with it.”
Roxon was born with her left arm missing below her elbow as the result of a birth defect.
“It was a fluke that kind of just happened,” she says.
She grew up in tiny Kippens, near Stephenville on the west coast of Newfoundland and was afraid of the water when she began to take swimming lessons at five. By 13, however, she was a member of Canada’s national para swimming program. In 2006, that same year, she competed in her first of seven world championships.
“I got immersed into this whole new world and fell in love with it,” Roxon says.
Over the years she has collected nearly 20 medals in international competition, including a gold in the 100-metre breaststroke at the 2016 Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, and bronze in Tokyo in 2021 as a member of the 4x100-metre freestyle relay team.
“I felt super calm going into the 100 metres in Rio,” says Roxon, who is coached by her father, Leonard. “My main focus was to swim my race and then I left it in God’s hands.
“I swam the best I have in my entire life.”
She was named a captain of Canada’s Paralympic swimming team this year along with Aurélie Rivard and Nicolas-Guy Turbide and still ranks among the best in the world in her prime event, the 100-metre breaststroke. Roxon won bronze medals at the world championships in each of the last two years, and in 2022 also broke Canadian records at the worlds in the 200-metre individual medley and the 50-metre freestyle.
Roxon competes in the S8 category, which is open to para swimmers who have lost either both hands or one arm and includes athletes with severe restrictions to lower limbs.
She says the last year ahead of the Paralympics has been different from others.
“I have been at this and on the national team for nearly 20 years,” Roxon says. “I’ve done almost 27 years of swimming, which is a lot of time to dedicate to one thing.”
She says she found it difficult to get motivated until her best friend Sabrina Duchesne invited her to train with her in Quebec City. Duchesne, who will compete at the Paralympics for the third time, is a specialist at freestyle events.
“I had been going to the gym and swimming but I’d get in the water and didn’t want to be there,” Roxon says. “I trained mostly by myself for 20 years and it is very daunting. Training beside Sabrina was very good for me. She pushed me and made me accountable.”
She feels ready to challenge for another medal – or more – in Paris. She is entered in the 100-metre breaststroke and other disciplines, including the 200-metre individual medley and 400-metre freestyle relay.
“I’d love to see myself on the podium but for now I am going to focus on the process,” Roxon says. “The result is going to be what it is going to be.
“I could swim the fastest in my life and three other people could do the exact same thing and be on the podium ahead of me.”
She doesn’t worry. She has accomplished so much. She has been appointed to the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador and has a highway named after her near Kippens.
And she is a role model to 21 younger swimmers on Canada’s Paralympic team in Paris.
“That started a long time ago,” Roxon says cheerfully. “They all call me ‘grandma.’ One member of the team told me he was born the same year that I went to my first Paralympic Games.”