Profile of Para cycling athlete, Mike Sametz. Scovan is proud to sponsor Mike on his path towards medalling at the Paralympic Games.
“I have competed for the Canadian Para cycling National Team since 2014. Para cycling has four classifications: Cycle, Tricycle, Tandem, and Handcycle. Each cycling class is further classified on a numeric scale based on severity of impairment. My classification in Para cycling is Men’s C3 (MC3) as I ride a traditional road bike and out of five impairment classes my cerebral palsy is in the middle on the severity spectrum for cycling.
For more information on Para cycling classification please see Lexi Global.
My primary focus is on Road cycling in the Time Trial and Road Race events. Since I began racing my best results have come in the Time Trial where I have won consecutive World Championships (2017, 2018) in the MC3 class. I have also competed in Track cycling up until the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games. In the Fall of 2023, I began training on the track again with the objective of competing in the Individual Pursuit as well as the Road cycling events at the Paris Paralympic Games this September.
I am grateful to be a returning athlete to Scovan’s sponsorship program as I was previously sponsored in 2019. Unfortunately, in 2019, an early season crash caused the underlying condition of Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs) to spiral out of control. As a result, I had to decline my selection to the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics. It also began a four-year rollercoaster to return to health. Between the last quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of 2022, I was hovering in the yellow to red REDs state (see exhibit B).
In 2022, after being in a quasi-recovery state I made major changes to my support team. The key change was working with a performance dietitian that had a stronger understanding of REDs. Her expertise was critical to avoiding the previous recovery pitfalls that plagued me the previous years. It took years to recover because returning to a stable energy balanced state was not easy as it required a behaviour and mindset change to performance and training.
I successfully returned to competition in 2023 with a bronze medal in the MC3 Time Trial at Road World Championships this past August in Glasgow, Scotland and two bronze medals (Time Trial and Individual Pursuit) at the Parapan American Games in Santiago, Chile in November. I am exhilarated to be back competing internationally and deeply appreciative that Scovan is again supporting my journey towards medalling at the Paralympic Games.”
