Benjamin Chain is the recipient of the 2016 Special Olympics Award of Excellence.
The award recognizes a Special Olympics athlete or team who has excelled locally, provincially or nationally and who possess qualities consistent with the Special Olympics mandate “Let me win, but if I cannot win let me be brave in the attempt."
Benjamin certainly exemplifies the definition of this award.
Benjamin has been a Special Olympics athlete since 1993 when he began his journey in the sports of swimming and athletics at the local level. By 1998 Ben was representing North Bay at the local and regional level in swimming, track and field and power lifting. Since the year 2000 Ben has added softball, basketball and alpine skiing to his list of sports and has competed at Provincial and National events many times since then.
Since 2002 Ben has claimed 12 provincial medals and 5 National medals. In 2010 he represented North Bay as a powerlifter at Nationals in London where he won 3 gold and 1 silver medal. In 2014 he was part of the team Ontario soccer team that finished 4th at the National Summer games in Vancouver. Most recently he participated in the provincial winter games in North Bay in 2015 where he captured 2 silver and 1 bronze medal in Alpine Skiing.
He then moved on to the Canadian National Winter games in Cornerbrook Newfoundland in February 2016 where he captured one silver and one bronze medal in Alpine Skiing. In July of this year Ben will be competing in track and field at the 2017 Ontario provincial summer games in Brampton.
Ben is a great ambassador for our city and he is a funny character with a great sense of humour and plenty of charisma. The city had the pleasure of seeing Ben drop the puck at the Battalion Game in 2015 as a representative of the Provincial Games. Benjamin doesn’t always grasp the idea that being chosen to go to Special Olympics is an honour: he just loves his sports, and to him, it just means that he has to try his best and that he can go to new places to “do it”!
What he loves most about Special Olympics, is just being with other athletes doing what he likes. He is, of course, very aware that a medal means he did well, and this always comes as a surprise to him and makes him very proud.
