Mireille Landry, physiotherapist and exercise coordinator with Cardiology at WCH, has a passion for sports medicine that has taken her around the world – most recently Paris, France.
This is Mireille’s third time being on the Paralympic sports therapy team, previously she attended the Rio de Janeiro games in 2016 and Tokyo in 2020. Though it’s not her first Paralympic games as a sports therapist, this year she takes on the role of Head Therapist. As Head Therapist, Mireille is leading a team of sport physiotherapists, sport massage therapists, and athletic therapists to oversee the treatment and emergency medical protocols for the Canadian athletes that are competing.
Mireille has always had an interest in sport physiotherapy. She worked towards receiving her advanced credentials from the sport physiotherapy Canada division of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association in 2015, which made her a registered international sports physiotherapist. This allowed her to begin attending major games, in Canada and internationally.
Mireille returns to the Paralympics because she loves the environment. She explained, “You’re working with teams who and athletes who have worked very hard to get where they are. You’re just trying to be a tiny little cog in the wheel that that makes everything fall into place for people to have their best performance.”
Working with top athletes represents a new challenge, in a way that she doesn’t necessarily experience in her everyday work. It presents the opportunity to collaborate with other therapists and sport medicine physicians over a shared goal in a close environment. Mireille added, “You learn a lot from working with different people in the Paralympic bubble and you get really close to people quickly because you’ve got the shared lived experience.”
This year, Mireille is most excited to return to the Paralympic games after the immediate threat of COVID-19 has passed. She shared, “Tokyo 2020, which turned into 2021, had a really tight bubble and lots of distancing and masking – a very different feel from the previous games I had attended”. Eager to return to a more social setting in the Paralympic games, Mireille also looks forward to some Paris sight-seeing and having a front-row seat to watch high-level sporting events.
Catch the Canadian Paralympic Team competing in Paris from August 28 to September 8, 2024.