Rick Hansen provides brakes for his friend Mel Fitzgerald as they descend into St. John's, Nfld., during the start of Hansen's Canadian tour.Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press
Mel Fitzgerald was a champion wheelchair racer who brought innovation to his sport’s equipment, as well as to training regimens.
Mr. Fitzgerald, who has died in New Zealand at 70, set world records while also advocating for greater accessibility and the building of infrastructure in his native Newfoundland and Labrador so those with disabilities need not face barriers.
As a young man in his athletic heyday, he had wild, unkempt hair and a beard so bushy he looked like a castaway. An avid user of a handcycle into his 60s, he was a familiar figure on the bike paths and trailways of St. John’s, where he liked to celebrate the end of a weekly ride with an otherwise forbidden date square.
Mr. Fitzgerald constantly tinkered with racing wheels and push rims to make wheelchairs lighter and sleeker as the sport evolved.
He encouraged many wheelchair users to take up sports, whether wheelchair basketball or racing on a track, as a means of maintaining fitness while also engaging fully in life.
Among those he mentored was Rick Hansen of Williams Lake, B.C., who was paralyzed as a teenager from the waist down after being flung from the bed of a pickup truck while returning from a fishing trip. At the time the men met, Mr. Hansen was an avid wheelchair basketball player who had recruited another British Columbian, Terry Fox, to his team. Mr. Fitzgerald urged Mr. Hansen to compete in track events.
“Mel was kind and welcoming to a young rookie looking for inspiration,” Rick Hansen said recently. “He encouraged me to get involved and took me down a different road.”
The two became friends and competitors. They raced as teammates in relays when representing Canada at such international competitions as the Paralympics and the Pan American Games, though they more often pursued the other in a desperate bid to be first across the finish line.
As friendly as he was in the dressing room, Mr. Fitzgerald was known to be fiercely competitive in a race.
“I always knew he would bring it,” Mr. Hansen said.
Among the highlights of Mr. Fitzgerald’s global travels was an audience with the Pope at the Vatican.
Mel Fitzgerald (left), Rick Hansen and André Viger on the podium after the wheelchair marathon at the 1984 Paralympics in Stoke Mandeville, England.Handout
Melvin Leo Fitzgerald was born on July 20, 1953, to Mary Matilda (née Kennedy), known as Hilda, and Eric Joseph Fitzgerald. He was raised in Trepassey, a small fishing community on the Avalon Peninsula’s southeast corner. Trepassey Harbour was the departure point in 1928 for Friendship, a Fokker floatplane with a male pilot and mechanic, in which Amelia Earhart as a passenger became the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
Young Mel contracted polio at age two. At school, he played softball, taking his turn at bat while another student ran in his place. He also played hockey. “I couldn’t use my legs, so they used to strap me to my chair and I’d be the goaltender,” he recalled years later. He also served as manager of his high school’s basketball team.
After moving to St. John’s in his early 20s, Mr. Fitzgerald began training in earnest, developing tremendous upper-body strength with arms and chest as chiselled as a comic-book superhero.
He made a breakthrough in 1978 at the sixth Pan American Wheelchair Games at Rio de Janeiro, setting a world record for his degree of disability by completing 100 metres in 18.3 seconds in a heat. He was a second slower in the finals, claiming the silver medal. He also set a world mark in the 1,500-metre event by finishing in four minutes, 49 seconds to win a gold medal.
Two years later at Arnhem, Netherlands, at the sixth Summer Paralympics, known at the time as the Olympics for the Disabled, Mr. Fitzgerald won a gold medal in the 800-metre in his category and another gold in the 1,500 metres in a new world record time of four minutes, 17 seconds. He won a silver in the 100 metres and a fourth medal, a bronze, in the 4-by-100-metre relay with teammates Ron Minor of Edmonton, André Viger of Sherbrooke, Que., and Mr. Hansen of Vancouver. The Canadian team had set a world mark in an earlier heat with a time of one minute, 11.28 seconds, nearly three seconds faster than the previous record.
Mr. Fitzgerald was named Canada’s male athlete of the year in 1980 by the Sports Federation of Canada. He beat out Gaétan Boucher, an Olympic silver-medalist speedskater, and Ken Reid, the World Cup skier, for the title.
“Winning this award means that people in disabled sport are going to get the recognition they deserve,” he said after receiving his award from federal sports minister Gerald Regan. “I only hope it means that we are now being accepted as athletes and not as being out for a fun time.”
After winning more medals and setting a new world record at the Pan American Wheelchair Games in Halifax in 1982, Mr. Fitzgerald added marathon racing to his repertoire. He and Mr. Hansen were considered among the favourites in the wheelchair division of the 1983 Montreal Marathon.
“We broke from the pack early,” Mr. Hansen said. “The two of us were back and forth through the race. We turned a corner about 100 metres to the finish line. I got ahead by just a bit. He tucked in behind me to get the draft effect and then he beat me across the finish line.”
Mr. Fitzgerald covered the 42.195-kilometre route in one hour, 59 minutes, 12 seconds, one second ahead of his Vancouver friend.
Mr. Hansen had to wait a year for revenge. At the Paralympics in England the following summer, Mr. Hansen completed the route from the village of Chalfont Saint Peter to Stoke Mandeville in one hour, 49 minutes, 52.6 seconds, less than two seconds ahead of Mr. Fitzgerald. This time, Mr. Hansen drafted behind his friendly rival. “I was able to take him down in the final 100 metres,” Mr. Hansen said.
The two were among eight athletes to qualify for a wheelchair marathon demonstration event at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Mr. Hansen finished third in a race won by a Belgian. Mr. Fitzgerald came fourth, earning a scroll printed with the Olympic motto.
“This scroll is for losers,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “It’s nice, but I’d rather have a medal.”
Mel Fitzgerald joins Rick Hansen on the Man in Motion tour through Newfoundland and Labrador in 1986.Handout
Mr. Hansen soon after gained fame for his global Man in Motion tour, which had him travelling more than 40,000 kilometres through 34 countries to raise money for spinal-cord research. Mr. Hansen began the final cross-Canada leg of his world tour from Cape Spear in Newfoundland, where he was accompanied by Mr. Fitzgerald.
When Mr. Hansen returned to the province to mark the 10th and 25th anniversary of his tour, he was joined both times by Mr. Fitzgerald.
Away from competition, Mr. Fitzgerald sold medical supplies for a company called AIM (Access, Independence, Mobility) Services, which offered walkers, bath lifts, grab bars and other items.
Mr. Fitzgerald was named to the Order of Canada in 1982. In 1992, he won the Stan Stronge Award from the Canadian Wheelchair Sports Association for developing training techniques. He was inducted into the Canadian Wheelchair Sports Hall of Fame in 2018.
Mr. Fitzgerald died in his sleep on Oct. 3 of arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease. He leaves his partner, Sarah Horner; sons, Liam Fitzgerald and Riley Fitzgerald, from an earlier marriage; stepdaughter, Kristen Rattray; three grandchildren; ex-wives, Vicki Gill and Jane (née Malone) Fitzgerald; and a sister, Lorraine. He was predeceased by a sister, Josephine.
When he and other athletes had an audience with Pope John Paul II after a competition in Rome in 1981, His Holiness pressed into his hand a blessed keepsake. On his return to Newfoundland, Mr. Fitzgerald presented the rosary as a gift to his mother.