Brent Lakatos wins the Men's 800m T53 final race on Day Six of the IPC World Para Athletics Championships in Dubai on Nov. 12, 2019 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.Tom Dulat/Getty Images
Brent Lakatos made his debut in the Paralympics as a wheelchair racer in 2004 at Athens.
“It was my first time representing Canada and my first international competition outside of North America,” the Quebec native says from Japan, where he is about to compete at the Tokyo Games. “I was the new kid on the block and I was surrounded by all of these legends.
“It was a real eye-opener.”
His first event was a 200-metre sprint, which was memorable to him for being so unmemorable.
“I didn’t do very well,” Lakatos says. “It was over so quick that I didn’t even know what happened. It was a real shocker.”
Lakatos, 41, is about to partake in his fifth Paralympics. The seven medals he earned in London in 2012 and Rio de Janeiro in 2016 are more than any other member of the Canadian team in Tokyo. Along with that, he has won 11 individual gold medals at world championships and three at Parapan American Games.
He plans to compete in six events over the next several weeks. The Paralympics – the opening gala was set for Tuesday evening local time (Tuesday morning in Canada) – ends Sept. 5 and 128 Canadians will participate in 18 sports.
Two Canadians – archer Karen Van Nest and wheelchair rugby athlete Patrice Simard – are making their sixth Paralympic appearances. Lakatos is one of a half-dozen Canadians at their fifth. A total of 55 will make Paralympic debuts, the youngest being 17-year-old swimmer Nicholas Bennett and the oldest 62-year-old equestrian Winona Hartvikson.
Of all the Games, Lakatos says this one is easily the weirdest. Nearly all training camps, qualifying events and even the 2020 Paralympics were cancelled because of COVID-19.
“I’m not taking anything for granted until I am actually on the starting line,” he says. “My brain has been in that mode for so long.”
His training for the Tokyo Games was interrupted by a wrist injury and then by the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Lakatos of Canada celebrates as he crosses the finish line in first place in the Wheelchair race during the 2020 Virgin Money London Marathon around St. James's Park on Oct. 04, 2020 in London.Thomas Lovelock for London Marathon Events/Getty Images
“I was hopeful at one point because the lockdown seemed to be working,” Lakatos says.
Lakatos lives in Loughborough, England, with his wife Stefanie Reid, a gold-medal-winning British Paralympic long jumper. He saw her warming up beside the track at an event more than a decade ago and ventured over to say hello.
“I decided to introduce myself, which is something I never do,” Lakatos says. “Then I asked her out and she flatly refused. It took a while, but I wore her down.”
Lakatos routinely travels to the Canary Islands to train for four to six weeks each winter, but last year he hopped on a plane, flew to Tenerife and was not allowed to disembark because of COVID-19 restrictions. “There were seven passengers aboard and I was the only one that had to stay in my seat,” he says. “I hadn’t even given it that much thought.”
Lakatos will be busy in Tokyo: he is entered in the 100-, 400-, 800-, 1,500- and 5,000-metre races as well as the marathon.
“I wouldn’t have signed up for all, but I think I have a shot at winning any of those,” Lakatos says. “My goal is to win them all. If you don’t set the bar high, why even do it.”
Lakatos is certainly a contender in the marathon. He won the men’s wheelchair division at the 2020 London Marathon in 1 hour 36 minutes 4 seconds. He finished a hair’s breadth ahead of British rival David Weir and Marcel Hug of Switzerland.
The October race was limited to an elite field and the course was changed. Rather than rolling through the city streets, the participants did 18 laps around Buckingham Palace and St. James’s Park. There weren’t any spectators.
“I was really grateful the organizers were able to put it together,” Lakatos says. “It was the only major race not to be cancelled. Even if it had been at the last minute, it gave us something to train for. And to win gives you a lot of motivation going forward.”
Lakatos, who grew up in the suburbs of Montreal, had a freak accident when he was 6 while playing hockey with friends. He fell and hit the boards, and the impact caused a blood vessel to burst inside his spine.
“When it happened, I fell and cried and went over to my mom, and then went back out,” he says.
By the next morning, he was losing feeling in one leg. A blood clot was found during exploratory surgery, but he was eventually left without use of his legs.
“I think when an injury like that happens it is easier to adapt if you are a young kid,” he says. “I was initially upset because I couldn’t do the same things as the rest of my friends, but they were all great to me. I had a great childhood, and grew up as normally as I could.”
He was introduced to wheelchair basketball at age 12, and it remained his passion into his early 20s.
“I had never met anybody in a wheelchair until then,” he says. “A whole new world opened up to me. At my first practice I learned to bounce down a step, jump up a curb and go up an escalator. Nobody can teach you to push a wheelchair with your hands. It is just something you learn.”
Lakatos played on Canada’s junior national team and was recruited to play wheelchair basketball at the University of Texas, where his club won a national championship. He switched to wheelchair racing before the 2004 Paralympics and has got better and better with age.
“I considered retiring after Beijing in 2008, and London in 2012,” he says. “Maybe I’ll retire after this one. But I’m still getting faster and am still able to win.”
Sign up for The Globe’s Olympic newsletter and follow all of the news, features and opinion in the leadup to the Summer Games in Tokyo.