REACHING
FOR GOLD
By Lisa Bucher
Victoria Nolan isn’t new to National
sports, she retired from rowing after
the London 2012 Paralympic summer
games in order to spend more time
with her family. She missed having a
training plan and goals for herself. So
she took on cycling as a new challenge.
Olympic rower, Sarah Bonikowsky
Chaudhery retired at the same time
and now pilots their tandem cycle.
At the age of 18, Nolan was diagnosedwith retinitis pigmentosa. “At that
point I was shocked to find out I was
already legally blind,” she said. “I hadlost 90 percent of my sight and had no
idea. Because I lost it gradually I just
learned how to adapt to it.” She was
able to read even up to university.
It was after having her two children
that she went through a lot of vision
changes in a short amount of time
and that was the hardest time of her
life. She adapted to her vision loss by
memorizing her environment. She
used to use a cane, but she has a guide
dog. She came to realize that she
needed to find something that would
force her to get out of the house and be
independent in order to be a good role
for her children.
In 2006, at the age of 31, Nolan started
rowing, “rowing is a late entry sport,
but not usually that late,” she laughed.
“I decided to try to find a sport and
tried different things.”
“The rowing is kind of funny because
it just popped into my head to give it
a try.” She looked it up and they were
32 Optical Prism | April 2015
advertising a program for people with
disabilities and that is what sold her
on trying it. She ended up winning a
spot in the national para-rowing team
and competed at the 2008 Paralympic
Games in Beijing. This was the first
year rowing was a Paralympic sport.
“London was disappointing for us
because we had won the World Championships in 2010,” she said. “So we
were expecting to do very well.” They
ended up finishing 7th. “It was a
disappointment in that sense but the
experience at the Paralympics was
amazing.”
In 2010, the world masters competition was in St. Catherines, ON and
she entered the abled body category
against women her own age to see
h ow she would do. “My rowing partner was born without three of her
fingers. The two of us entered and we
won the gold and that was really cool.”
“When we were training before weleft
for the world championships we would
often look for men’s crews to train
against because our boat was two men
and two women,” she said. So if they
could find a boat with four men it was
a pretty good challenge for them to
take on. “The first time we did that we
pulled up to the start line and there
was a bunch of men’s crews and they
were like you guys are in the wrong
race,” she said. They explained that
they were going to race them as a way
to get practice. “They asked us if we
wanted a head start. We said no and