By Cecilia Nasmith/Today’s Northumberland
Inducted into the Ontario Cerebral Palsy Hall of Fame in 1990, and among the first group inducted into the Cobourg and District Sports Hall of Fame in 2019, Paralympian Frank Mazza was inducted into the Peterborough and District Sports Hall of Fame June 14 – receiving two standing ovations at the ceremony.
Mazza started racing in his 20s in the early 1980s when he lived in Cobourg, but he was born in Peterborough with Cerebral Palsy and developmental issues – which is where he has retired.
Along with family members, Mazza was joined at Saturday’s induction by two long-time friends from Northumberland County – journalist Suzanne Atkinson, whose coverage of the triumphs of his career drummed up support and donations, and Doug Montgomery, who took on much of Mazza’s training when he lived at the D’Arcy Place Developmental Centre, ensuring he would be at the gym three days a week and at the track three days a week.
In the 1980s, nobody televised the Paralympics – then called the International Games for the Physically Disabled. Montgomery said Mazza raced in CP class three, which meant racers had three limbs affected.
While his competitors could wheel with two arms in cases where one arm was mildly affected by CP, Mazza only had the use of one arm.
Winning most of the events he entered in the Eastern Ontario and Ontario CP games, Mazza had a two-year training program designed for him by Team Canada, and caught another lucky break.
He had been racing against competitors who, unlike him, had the latest technology in racing chairs. Then they met a racer at the Ontario Games who was an engineering student and had made his own racing chair. He took on the challenge to make the first one-armed racing wheelchair in North America for Mazza’s use.
The results, said Montgomery – vastly improved times and Mazza’s rise to become the fastest one-armed wheelchair racer on the planet.
He caught the eye of Rick Hansen at the 1984 International Games for the Disabled in New York, as well as many others who were amazed that Mazza could go so fast and stay in his lane using only one arm – because going outside the lane can disqualify a racer (and his team in relay events).
Mazza would win an impressive list of gold, silver and bronze medals in competitions around the world, including at the International Cerebral Palsy Games in Belgium in 1986. He held national and provincial records in many events for several years.
Doug Wilton, Manager and Head Coach for Team Canada, recalled that Mazza was the only CP3 racer on any of the top teams, but “he wheeled the most incredible leg of a relay imaginable. We won gold and set a new World Record in a photo finish.
“We didn’t know it at the time, but that gold medal gave us the most gold medals, the most total medals and the most points, so it was undeniable that Canada was the overall World Championship Nation.
“Frank had won individual silver and bronze medals, but his contribution to the relay win was monumental.”
Mazza’s racing career ended with a 1986 cancer diagnosis. Although he beat the disease, he was unable to compete again.
The notation in the program from the Peterborough induction said that Mazza also received the Rotary Club of Toronto Special Achievement Award for International Competition for Disabled in 1985.
“He received certificates of Achievement from the Province of Ontario and City of Peterborough. ‘Fast’ Frank Mazza is a Gold Medal Olympian and a Gold, Silver and Bronze Paralympic World Games medalist.”
