Decorated Paralympian Aurelie Rivard leads Canadian swim team into Paris

I feel like I can I still have things to accomplish in terms of times in ter in terms of performances not necessarily in terms of medals so that's kind of what keeps me going in the pool even after so many years of course now my personal records happen to be world records so that's kind of what I'm focusing on uh I want to lower them uh if I can or get as close to them as possible uh knowing that you know I'm older now uh I've been through a lot more things than Tokyo and you know Rio so I'm just really excited to see what I can do um at my for games the thing that changed the most is how we view par Olympians and especially in swimming because people don't really realize but when I started it's not that long ago it's like 12 15 years ago we weren't seen as true athletes we were like people kept asking me are you a real athlete or a par Olympian as if it was the two opposite Concepts and that recognition is what evolved the most I feel in swimming within my teammates um we we used to get looked down upon a little bit it's no longer the case most of the time and um we're integrated to with the able bodies uh at trials and Nationals which wasn't the case before we had our own so um a lot of things involved in the right direction in in the past decade that I'm really happy about [Music]

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