Winners in athletics at the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games were rewarded with the privilege of ringing the bell engraved “Paris 2024” that was destined for the restored Notre Dame Cathedral. Canadian wheelchair racer Austin Smeenk chimed in big time and fulfilled that desire as Paralympic Gold champion in the T34 800 metres on September 7 – two months to the day before the reopening of the world-famous landmark. “I really wanted to ring that bell,” Smeenk said following a triumph witnessed by 80,000 spectators at Stade de France, including more than a dozen of his family and friends. The Gold was his second medal at Para Paris ’24 after he garnered Bronze five days earlier in the T34 100 metres. The Oakville native, who turns 28 on February 24, was in his third Paralympics. But unlike Rio in 2016 and Tokyo in 2020, this time he returned home with successes. Three months earlier at the Grand Prix in Paris he set world records in the T34 800 and the T34 400. He earned his first World Championship medals the previous year with Silver in the T34 100 and Bronze in the T34 400. He was born with hereditary spastic paraplegia which causes progressive stiffness and contraction in the lower limbs. “When I was a young boy, I just wanted to play sports, go fast and try new things,” he said in an interview. “I really didn’t want to be left out of sports at all.” A tattoo on his arm illustrates why he’s such a force. It reads: “dream … desire … do” – and, without doubt, those three powerful words will motivate him to even more accomplishments!