One athlete from Southeastern Saskatchewan represented her country at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics by winning Canada's first medal of the event.

Keely Shaw is a cyclist who originally hails from the town of Midale, with plenty of family and friends in the community.

She ended up winning bronze in the C4 3,000-meter individual pursuit.

She says that after putting in nearly 3 years of effort training for the races, winning that event felt pretty special.

"it was such a flood of emotions that day, I think I felt everything from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. by the time I got back to my hotel room, I was just emotionally drained. I wasn't happy with the way my first race went, my qualifier race that day."

"I don't think that performance I put on was reflective of my fitness or the race I could have done, so to see me come back and be able to put it down again ad best my time for the qualifiers in the medal round in order to win the bronze was such a rush. I'm so fortunate that I have the right tools and work with the right people to bring myself out of that low place that I found myself in that qualifier."

"To have that be Canada's first medal was pretty special, You know a female cyclist won the last medal for Canada at the Olympics so it'd only be fitting that a female cyclist wins the first medal for Canada at the Paralympics."

Shaw said that one of the things that kept her going through training and into the Olympics was the support she received from her hometown crowd.

"The support I've felt throughout, really since I've been training, but especially in the last month or so, the messages I got, the support from my hometown of Midale, a bunch of people got together and made a big donation to the rink in my name, which is really a push I needed sometimes when those races got a little bit harder, knowing that I had all these people behind me."

Shaw says that for now, she'll be focusing on her Ph.D., as she's teaching a course this term. She hopes to get back into races this October.