PARIS — The Paralympic learning curve was steep, but worth it for Jacob Wassermann.
Less than two years after taking up the sport of para rowing and six years after he survived a bus crash that killed members of his Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team, Wassermann raced the men's singles B final Sunday in Paris.
The goaltender tried adaptive water skiing and para hockey before giving para rowing a try at the Saskatoon Rowing Club. "I'm the youngest in the field with the least amount of experience by a long shot," Wassermann said."Seeing how these guys prep race day and even leading up to race day, it's a whole new world. It's much different than what I knew and what I even expected coming in.
In his first season of international racing, Wassermann's silver medal at a continental regatta in Rio de Janeiro in March qualified a boat for Paris, which he filled. He was Canada's lone para rower in Paris. It's one thing to know how fast the best rowers in the world go, and it's another to be on the water racing head to head with them, said his coach John Wetzstein.
"He knows how to work hard. He's not afraid to work hard," Wetzstein said."He's starting to show in training that he can touch the speeds that we need to hit.
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