No.1 in Canada, now look out world

by Scott Larson
The StarPhoenix

July 12, 2004 - Meaghan Buisson sure knows how to make an impact.

The day before she was to return to Canada from France to compete at the national inline speed skating championships, the 24-year-old from Saskatoon was taking a spin on a bike when she met up with a crazy French driver.

"A car came around a corner and hit me," says Buisson, who broke a bone in her wrist in the June 23 mishap.

A doctor told her she needed a full cast. Knowing that would compromise her chances at nationals, Buisson postponed getting her wrist plastered until after the event. She just dusted herself off and kept going.

She went on to win all nine races at nationals, ranging from a 300-metre sprint to a marathon.

"I have it casted now for the next six weeks," Buisson says from Pearson Airport in Toronto where she is on her way to Italy to train for the world championships in September.

Stubbornness, coupled with a little naivete, has pushed Buisson to new heights in inline speed skating.

Canada's top women's skater, she trained in France for two months and took the world by storm in May when she won a French Inline Cup race in Lille. She covered the 42 kilometers in one hour, 24 minutes and 50 seconds.

Buisson didn't even know who the competition was in the race. It turned out four of the top women in the world were competing.

"They would break away and I'd chase them down," she says. "I didn't know who they were."

With about 15 km to go Buisson broke from the pack and never looked back. She finished nine seconds ahead of her nearest competitor.

"The element of surprise was on my side," Buisson says. "There had never been a Canadian win a major event before.

"People now realized I'm strong, and it's gotten a lot harder."

In her next two World Cup races Buisson finished 15th and 24th.

In one of the races, she crashed into a fence. In typical fashion she got back up and finished strong.

Buisson is the ultimate outsider on the world circuit. The sport is huge in Europe, while at home it isn't even officially recognized by Sport Canada.

Buisson funds herself by being a motivational speaker and with sponsors such as Kindersley Transport and Peak Mechanical.

In 2002, Buisson went to Belgium for her first world championships and found out just how much she needed to learn.

"I was laughed off the track," she says.

On the bus with other riders going back to the hotel, Buisson summoned the nerve to ask one of the other team's coaches to give her some pointers.

That coach was Bill Begg, New Zealand's national team coach who also is with the Bont professional squad.

"He spent eight hours with me that night and we kept in touch," says Buisson, who will train with Bont for a few weeks before worlds.

Buisson, who is coached in Canada by John Monroe, says she has a lot to learn before reaching the upper echelon.

"I still don't know how to skate in a pack," she says. "I'm in the pack, make a mistake and get dropped."

In one race there were 50 women and 160 men, all doing about 45 km/h.

"It's terrifying," she says. "I just stopped skating. And as soon as you get dropped from the pack, you can't get back."

She's made a six-year game plan and has the 2007 world championships marked on the calendar for her big breakthrough.

The world championships this year are at the beginning of September in Italy. Buisson would like to get into the final and place in the top 15.

"Hopefully I can encourage some of the younger kids to keep going," she says. "Some days are long, hard and extremely frustrating. Other days I'm making progress.

"It's been cool."

© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2004

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