Team Manitoba Flag Bearer - Sarah-Anne Brault

Triathlete thrilled about Canada Games Carrying flag for Manitoba

By: On The Home Front / Ashley Prest

Sarah-Anne Brault's athletic resume includes two junior triathlon championships. She competes in cross-country and 5,000-metre races at West Virginia University.

Sarah-Anne Brault loves blazing a trail and the 19-year-old triathlon athlete from Winnipeg will do just that for Team Manitoba at the 2009 Canada Games.

Brault will be Manitoba's flag-bearer and lead the parade of about 400 athletes, coaches and managers during the opening ceremonies of the multi-sport games for youth athletes, which will unfold in Summerside, P.E.I., from Aug. 15-29.

"It's such an honour to be chosen and I'm really excited to go," said Brault, who competed in athletics at the 2005 Canada Summer Games in Regina and won a silver medal in the 5,000-metre race.

"When I went in 2005, I remember it as one of the best experiences of my life. That race was amazing. I wasn't expecting anything out of it and it just shows that anything can happen.

"I've never been anywhere with the same spirit and the same atmosphere. I don't know really what it is, but it's really something special to experience."

Brault, a bilingual graduate of College Louis Riel, is a student athlete at West Virginia University, where she is a varsity athlete in cross country and the 5,000 metres.

Though she competed in athletics four years ago, this time she will compete in triathlon, where she has already had considerable international success.

Brault has been a member of Canada's national junior triathlon team for the past three years, she was the 2007 national junior champion and won the 2008 Pan American Continental Junior Triathlon Championship in Mexico.

Triathlon is a new sport at the 2009 Canada Games.

"To be competing in triathlon, it's special because it's the first time," said Brault, now in her first year in triathlon's under-23 age category. "Representing Manitoba, it might be a bit more pressure, but at the same time, it's really cool to have a team like this. Triathlon is really individual, usually. You race against your teammates that you train with, but this time there will be points (in the overall team category), so we'll all be part of Team Manitoba."

The Canada Games, held every two years and alternating summer and winter, are designed to assist the development of amateur athletes across the country. About 4,400 athletes from the 10 provinces, Northwest Territories, Yukon and Nunavut will compete in these games in18 sports during the two-week event.

Team Manitoba's honorary captains are two athletes who competed for Team Manitoba at previous Canada Games and went on to represent Canada at the Olympics. Michelle Sawatzky-Koop competed in the 1989 Canada Games in volleyball and went on to compete for Canada in the 1996 Olympics. Jay Lyon competed in the 2003 Canada Games in archery and just last year placed 10th at the 2008 Olympics, Canada's best-ever Olympic result in archery.