Kyle McMahon got an unexpected present when he checked his email Wednesday.
One that had him jumping out of his skin.
His inbox contained a message from pursu.it, an online platform to create funding opportunities for amateur athletes. It told McMahon that someone had given him $5,000 to help him reach his goal of swimming in the 2016 Parlympics.
"I was surprised to see an anonymous donor come up with $5,000, I had to look at the message a few times to let it sink in," said McMahon, from his home in Surrey.
McMahon, 23, has been featured on the pursu.it website since May 15. As of Friday afternoon the site had raised $7,675, with 37 days to reach his goal of $10,000.
In the video on the site, he talks about the injuries he suffered at age 4 in a motor vehicle accident while traveling home to Burns Lake with his mom and sister. Their car was rear-ended and McMahon spent the next two weeks in a coma. His brain injury damaged his ability to move his muscles and he took up swimming to help his rehabilitation. When he was nine, McMahon started competitive swimming with Prince George Special Olympics and he eventually joined the Prince George Barracudas Swim Club, where he climbed the national para-swimming ranks.
He moved to Surrey three years ago, where he now lives with his grandfather Cecil, his full-time caregiver since the accident.
McMahon competed at the 2009 and 2010 world championships and represented Canada at the 2011 Para-Pan Pacific championships. He and Surrey Knights Swim Club coach, Reg Shaw, figure McMahon will need $30,000 in funding over the next two years to pay for his trips and entry fees for the swim meets. He's eligible for funding from PacificSport and he says his family will provide the rest. He's also sponsored by Rona and plans to apply for scholarship money. McMahon's national team funding ended in 2011 and he's hoping to get that back.
For that to happen he has to swim well at the Can-Am meet in Edmonton in December and meet national team qualifying standards at the Pan-Am Games qualifier in Toronto, March 20-22. He needs to make just one of those qualifying times to make it on to the 2016 Paralympic team to compete for Canada in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sept. 7-18, 2016.
"It seems like I'm picking up momentum, I just have to maintain the skill set I have and keep getting better and faster," said McMahon. "The minimum qualifying standard for the Rio Paralympic team is the 50-metre butterfly. The standard is 33 seconds so I have a few seconds to go. My main strokes are the butterfly and the breaststroke. The breaststroke standard is pretty far from me right now. It's 1:25 for 100 metres and I'm stuck at 1:36."
He's getting pushed in practices by Surrey clubmate Adam Rahier, who is part of the Paralympic national team. McMahon swims in the S-7 (functional disability) category, while Rahier is an S-14 (intellectually disabled) athlete.
McMahon will be reunited with his Barracudas coach, Jason Smith, and several of his former clubmates at the provincial long course championships in Victoria, July 3-6. Other meets on McMahon's radar are the Para Pan American Games in Toronto, Aug. 7-14, 2015, and the Paralympic trials, April 5-10, 2016.
McMahon has completed four first-year courses in the information technology degree program at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey but for the next two years will be a part-time student while he focuses on his swimming.
