After a speeding cab driver struck and paralyzed her, sports and spirit saved Paralympic paddler Brianna Hennessy

 “Being able to block myself, from hockey, rugby, even boxing … I probably wouldn’t be here if not for that. I actually threw myself onto the hood and my skull smashed into the windshield. Sometimes, I think about how many other people in that exact accident who probably would have been dead.”

How did it come to be that seven years later she is approaching one of the biggest and best moments of her life — a Paralympics debut representing her country on the waters of Tokyo? Well, old habits mostly. Sports saved her again. Not just sports of course but all that comes with it. The Hennessy spirit, a stubborn-as-a-mule, steely Irish-Canadian streak that coursed its way across the Atlantic generations ago but survived the journey, coursing on through the descendants.