starphoenix_20oct2003

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Meaghan Buisson: Bullet on Blades

Canadian inline skating champ from Saskatoon has been clocked at 49 km/h

by Patrick Cabel
The StarPhoenix

October 20, 2003 - Meet Meaghan Buisson: inline skater, national champion, human speeding ticket.

Buisson was skating on campus a couple years ago, scouting out training areas. She was clocked by campus police doing 47 kilometers an hour in a 40-km/h zone.

She was ticketed for speeding, stunting, mischief and being a general menace to society.

"I have more speeding tickets on skates than I do in a car," she laughs. "I always wanted to frame my first speeding ticket, but they wouldn't let me keep it."

Buisson didn't learn her lesson. Last year, while on an eight-hour layover at Minneapolis-St.Paul international airport, Buisson decided to put on her skates and do some training on an interstate loop around the airport. Same crime, different country.

She was clocked at 49 km/h. Four police cruisers were waiting to bring her back to the airport.

"The cops are (now) a lot nicer to me in the three years that I have trained in Saskatoon. Instead of them chasing me down, I chase them down and say hi to them," she says. "I have to be an ambassador for the sport, because I'm one of the only ones in Western Canada doing it."

One of the few, but also one of the best. Buisson is the defending senior women's national champ in marathon, and is looking to add a world championship to her resume. Buisson will compete for Canada at the worlds in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, beginning Nov. 1. She will compete in the road events (which range from the 200-metre time trial to a 42-kilometre marathon) and track events (300-metre time trial up to 15 km-elimination race). Think short-track speed skating, but substitute concrete for ice.

Buisson, 23, first noticed inline when she was cycling in Winnipeg five years ago. She was passed by a group of skaters, and she couldn't catch them. "I have got to try that," she told herself, and soon after found herself at national championships in the novice category, her first competition.

"For the first three years, my goals in the sport were to stay on my feet and not get lapped," she recalls. "I was terrible. Absolutely horrible."

A big breakthrough came when she moved to Saskatoon to study at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine. She met Bruce Craven, who works with the Sport Medicine and Science Council of Saskatchewan . He started coaching her - the first time she had ever been coached in the sport. Craven then set her up with someone who has expertise in the sport, provincial speed skating coach John Monroe, who compete at three world inline championships and coached the Canadian inline team at the 1999 Pan American Games.

She stays on her feet now, and she's doing the lapping. Buisson likes Pezer Crescent in Silverwood as a good speed training spot and Highway 41 between the city and Aberdeen for longer endurance training. She won the national championship earlier this year, and had an amazing result - 11th overall - at her first World Cup race in Duluth, Minn., in September, setting a Canadian record.

She put school on hold to devote her energy to training, a decision she doesn't regret; but one that brings a world of financial struggles.

As roller sports isn't officially recognized by Sport Canada, national team athletes aren't eligible for monthly training stipends. Buisson funds her training, equipment and travel costs out of her own pocket.

"It's a really, really scary place to be in... (but) this is the choice I've made. I would do it again in a heartbeat," she says. She lost her apartment, unable to pay the rent. She has eaten in soup kitchens, unable to buy groceries. "This last year has been really tough."

"I do the sport because I love it. When I'm out on the prairies, chasing the wind, that's when I am happiest. It's just the most amazing feeling in the world."

She has become a both an ambassador and advocate for her sport. In September she attended the annual meeting of Athletes Can, an advocacy group for Canada's amateur athletes. She presented a motion that athletes in non-recognized sports be eligible for funding if they have achieved a world results. That motion is being taken to the federal government.

"I wasn't going to get involved in sport politics... I'm first and foremost an athlete, but there was a question, if I don't get involved, who will?" she says. "Gandhi says that 'You have to be the change that you want to see in the world,' and if I can make a difference in my sport, then that's really cool."

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