Hometown hero Todd Nicholson named Chef de Mission for 2018 Paralympic Games

CTV Ottawa: Hometown hero named Chef de Mission CTV’s Matt Skube on Dunrobin’s Todd Nicholson being named team Canada Chef de Mission for the 2018 Paralympic Games.

Todd Nicholson has a special connection to the Jim Durrell Recreation Centre.

"I had a lot of Friday nights here, a lot of Sunday afternoons here," remembers Nicholson. "When I was playing and competing, this was my home rink."

The Dunrobin native played on the national sledge hockey team for 24 years, serving 15 of them as captain. A group of players from the team practiced at the Jim Durrell arena. Now, instead of leading a team, Nicholson will lead an entire contingent of Canadian athletes.

On Tuesday, Nicholson was named team Canada's Chef de Mission for the 2018 Paralympic Winter Games in PeyongChang, South Korea.

"As an athlete, I want to ensure that athletes are focused strictly on what they need to know, but also provide them with the knowledge and experience that they need going into the games," he says.

Nicholson knows the challenges athletes face and expects there will be a few next March in PeyongChang, but he's got a wealth of experience to draw from.

He serves as Chairman for the International Paralympic Committee Athletes' Council and also the IPC athlete representative to the International Olympic Committee. Both positions require him to be directly involved in organizing both the Paralympic and Olympic Games.

Nicholson has also personally experienced the growth of the Paralympic movement.

"Going to my first games in '94 and having no trouble picking people out in the stands because there was only a handful of them, to fast forwarding to 2010, 2014 and again in 2016, where you had difficulty sometimes getting tickets."

He's also inspired the next generation of sledge hockey players. That includes 20-year-old Ben Delaney, who suffered from osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer, and had to have his leg amputated. Delaney, who's from Ottawa, was introduced to sledge hockey by Nicholson and his wife Emily. Shortly after, he made the Canadian national team at the age of 16.

"To see Todd in this role, such an important role, such a good guy, he really deserves it," says Delaney.

Tyrone Henry also counts himself among those who looked up to Nicholson. Henry, 23, was paralyzed in a car crash in 2010. Even before he left the ICU, he knew he wanted to play sledge hockey. In October, he was named to the national team for the first time.

"As soon as I became a paraplegic, then I was like if he (Nicholson) can do it, represent Canada in sledge hockey and para-ice hockey, now I can do it too," he says.

With a handful of national players in Ottawa, Nicholson has already started his mission, looking for anyone that's willing to donate ice time for the team members to train.

After a bronze medal in Sochi in 2014, the team is ready to improve on that in 2018.

"We've been working really hard, we have a lot of depth and a lot of youth so I'm pretty excited for 2018 next year and bringing home that gold for Canada," says Delaney.