OLYMPIC HEROES TO PEI

Olympic and Paralympic heroes coming to SIS

S. RYAN QUIGLEY

JOURNAL PIONEER

Heather Moyse and eight other athletes will be on the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic Heroes tour is coming to the Summerside Intermediate School on Wednesday April 13.

The tour is in celebration of the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame induction ceremony being held at the Casino New Brunswick in Moncton on April 16.

The tour includes a stop in St. John’s, Newfoundland at mile zero on Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope 31st anniversary. The tour will also go through Charlottetown, and Halifax.

The tour includes seven Olympic athletes, including Moyes’ bobsleigh partner and gold medalist Kaillie Humphries, four-time medalist in short track speedskating Tania Vicent and two Paralympic athletes including Greg Westlake, Paralympic sledge hockey gold medalist/

Isabelle Hodge, the Canadian Olympic Committee’s manager of media relations, said the event is to spread the Olympic spirit across Atlantic Canada.

“The athletes realize how much support they’re given by the Canadian public and for them to be able to do this is very important.”

These events will be similar to a pep rally where the athletes share knowledge and stories about their experiences about how they got to where they are, said Hodge.

“Really touching on healthy, active living, being leaders, really being focused, setting goals. They want to impart knowledge and things important to them.”

It’s the first ever Olympic and Paralympic Hero tour the COC has done, said Hodge.

“We want to infuse different communities with the Olympic spirit and the Olympic movement. We are going to large cities, smaller cities.”

The idea came from a parade they held last year in Montreal with the 2010 athletes that had over 150,000 attend, she said.

“We thought, people are really excited about this, there’s a lot of attention and it’s nice to give back so we thought okay what can we do? So we mapped it out and we said let’s try doing a lead up to (the induction ceremony) and turn it into a tour.”