SPORTS
One-on-One with
PAUL POIRIER
Paul Poirier is an ice dancer. At the age of 27, he’s already a six-time Canadian national medalist and a two-time Olympian. However, when I met the lively Unionville-native for coffee, it quickly became evident that there was so much more to this young talent than his accolades. ot only is he a full-time athlete, but Paul is also completing his master’s degree in linguistics at the University of Toronto. He is benevolent and humble, articulate and inquisitive, and displays a vibrant passion for learning, but, above all, he has a powerful inner drive that he exercises in all facets of his life. It’s no wonder he can compete – and succeed – on an international stage. Poirier fell into his sport. “My parents are very sports-oriented, and we were pushed as kids to get into sports…. I started in the usual stuff – hockey and soccer and what have you, but I hated team sports very early on. Then I got put into figure skating and tennis and gymnastics, and the figure skating just stuck.” With an impressive amount of natural ability and an intrinsic sense of ambition, Poirier excelled on the ice from a young age. He began his training in Richmond Hill before linking up with a partner and moving to the ice dance center in Scarborough, where he’s been ever since. “I was enjoying that private lesson nature of it, where I got individualized tasks that were specific to what I needed to do, where I needed to go, what I needed to improve on. I enjoyed that process of improving myself and not simply being given generic exercises that the entire group was doing.”
“
“
N
By Jane Bradshaw
THERE’S an ELEMENT OF THEATRE THAT COMES [out] IN OUR SPORT, ANDWE ARE REALLY TRYING TO PUSH THAT. He quickly progressed through the levels of competition. By age 12, he was performing at national competitions, and by age 14, on the international stage. At 16, skating became a full-time job. However, he never let his training interfere with his education. “I am very academically-minded by nature, and I had parents who were fairly realistic,” Paul explained. “I went to university because it was something that I wanted to do. It gave me a sense of balance, so I wasn’t obsessing over skating all the time. It gave me something else to think about.” His commitments to both school and skating instilled an impressive work ethic, one that has enabled him to maintain scholastic pursuits. Currently, trilingual Paul is studying sentence structure, consulting language experts, and researching patterns in between training - a remarkable feat, considering how demanding his skating schedule is.
Photographer McKenzie James Fashion Editor Corey Ng 78
