A whole new Game Plan as COC partners with Smith School of Business

Over a near two-decade career as one of the most decorated Paralympians in history, Benoit Huot has by necessity and more latterly by design had to be as much entrepreneur as athlete.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Huot was among the first in Canadian sports to apply for a brand-new program that partners the Canadian Olympic Committee and Queen’s University’s Smith School of Business in offering full scholarships worth up to $95,000 annually to the country’s Olympic athletes who qualify into the Kingston school’s MBA program. Like any of the Montreal para-swimmer's peers in about any sport, the world after his competitive career is over has become more and more an issue. The program with the Smith School, among the top in North American business schools, aims to add an educational plank to the COC’s Game Plan initiative announced in 2015, offering as many as 154 scholarships a year over the next eight years in four different MBA programs, including a degree of flexibility that allows full-time training in a major centre at the same time.

“If you want to make your own way in this world, you have to be an entrepreneur and be creative,” Huot said Thursday in Toronto, where about 150 national-team athletes will gather Friday for an information session around the new program. “When it came to something as simple as getting a coach, it was different in the paralympic world to find someone, because many swimming coaches are looking for the next Michael Phelps more than anything – we had to go through different boards and try to make people’s eyes open to change it.

“Even in 2016 it’s still a challenge – not everyone is open to it. But it’s better.”

Canadian rugby international and Smith School strategic partnerships director Mitch Gudgeon, who helped shepherd the COC deal, points to a natural fit between the attributes behind success in sports and in business. Huot is emblematic of that, winning 20 medals (including nine gold) at five Paralympics, and while all that was going on he spent seven years at UQM fitting his studies around training to gain his undergrad degree in marketing, communications and management. An MBA was always in the back of his mind next, but last year when he looked into it there was the prospect of Rio 2016 in the way.

Now another four-year cycle looms leading up to Tokyo in 2020. And some familiar questions.

“I’m not sure if I’m going to have the energy and strength to do another four (years),” he said. “Telling myself I’ll be in Tokyo, that’s difficult right now. I’d love to but I’m very aware that it’s a long commitment and it’s not going to be an easy road, but I’m still passionate and I still love what I’m doing, training and swimming. As long as I have that fire I’m going to be in the water. It’d be almost impossible to be in Kingston for a year, but is there a way we can manage it and make it work? That’s the question. That’d be incredible.”

Double Olympic gold medalist Rosie MacLennan can relate. She too is at a similar point, fresh off Rio’s title-defending trampoline performance and finishing up her masters degree at the University of Toronto.

“This has created a whole new realm of support,” she said. “I think it’s great knowing when you’re training that whether you use it during your career or after it’s there. I don’t want to call it a safety net, but it’s a resource you can tap into when you’re ready, and it’s very open so you can tailor it to what your needs are.

“For me, I have goals in my sport still. I have skills that I would have loved to compete (with) in Rio but timing didn’t work out and I had to go with a more conservative routine. But I’m hoping to play with that over the next year. I love my sport still. It’s a lot of fun. I don’t feel like I’ve reached my peak yet, so we’ll see.”