IPC Swimming World Championships
12-18 August

Benoit Huot: Just one week until my home World Champs!

On 12 August the world’s best swimmers will gather in Montreal for the 2013 IPC Swimming World Championships. Benoit Huot talks about the Canadian team’s excitement for the first competition of its kind in North America. 05 Aug 2013
Imagen
A picure of a man in the pool holding starting block with his hands

Canada's Benoit Huot gets set to race the men's 100m backstroke S10 at the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

ⒸGetty Images

It will be a unique experience for all of us to have the crowd behind each Canadian competing.

Here we are seven days before the start of the IPC Swimming World Championships. The Canadian team and I are all centralized in Gatineau, Quebec close to Ottawa for our final training preparation into the Worlds. We are very excited to race in front of our friends and family at home. It will be a unique experience for all of us to have the crowd behind each Canadian competing.

Most of us have never competed at a major competition in Canada like the one coming up. We will enjoy the experience and every moment of it because we know these events don't happen every year.

We have been in Gatineau for the last few days and we have another four days to go before we head down to Montreal on Friday 9 August.

There are 25 swimmers from Canada that made the team at the trials in Minneapolis back in April. We have a great mix of rookies and veterans on our team. This World Championship is the first step for our team in preparation for the next cycle of getting to the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games.

It's great that we have a World Championship less than a year after London 2012 because it gave us the motivation to be back in the pool faster. We don't have to wait almost two full years before a major competition and race against the best in the world.

It's the first time that the IPC Swimming World Championship will be held in North America and I have to admit that I am happy that it's going to be in my home summer pool. Today, at the end of my swimming career, it is a privilege to have this event at home and it will give us a chance to increase the awareness of para-swimming in Canada. Hopefully this will inspire the next generation of kids to be more active and maybe start swimming.

We are looking foward to welcoming the best para-swimmers in the world to Montreal in a few days and we will have all together a great time.

GO CANADA GO!!!!