Monique Sullivan to wear the art of heroes this July

Though the official list of riders in the 2015 Pan Am Games has yet to be announced, Monique Sullivan, who would be riding for Canada, already knows which helmet she’ll be wearing if she’s a part of it. It wouldn’t just be a helmet, either, but a testament to the caring, handcrafted-discipline of the one who painted it. At its centre, directly over the brow, a Canadian maple leaf is rimmed with flames. Discreetly concealed in the flames themselves are two words: “love” and “joy.”

The helmet was painted by 16-year-old Joel Jamieson, a young Northwest Calgary boy who recently went through a kidney transplant. Although the words themselves might not be readily visible to spectators—which speaks to the artist’s grace with a brush, under the tutelage of professional artist Kelsey Fraser—the backdrop of the painted image will be: the Rocky Mountains, a nod to the shared hometown of both Jamieson and Sullivan herself.

“Art can propel people to do great things,” Fraser said, speaking to the CBC. “It will be neat to see Monique’s experience and how she feels with the helmet.”

The hand-painted helmet is the product of a program called Helmets for Heroes, started by Canadian alpine skier Brad Spence back in 2013. Training for the Sochi Olympics at the time, Spence visited the Alberta Children’s Hospital and met a young woman named Gillian O’Blenes-Kaufman, struggling with osteosarcoma. Spence befriended the young woman—a talented young artist, as he soon discovered—in the hospital, and through their meetings and correspondence, O’Blenes-Kaufman came to adorn Spence’s helmet with a sample of her art. “Funny enough,” Spence said, speaking to CBC News, “everyone around Gillian saw this talent except for her.”

Nine months later, tragically, O’Blenes-Kaufman passed away. Still, her talent lives on by inspiring a program that has cultivated the talents of others—and, as Sullivan shows, continues to.

The Pan Am double gold medallist and former Olympian, as the CBC reports, “jumped at the opportunity” to wear Jamieson’s art. She would carry the young artist’s work—and, in a meaningful way, his vitality as an outdoors and sports enthusiast—into the velodrome along with her at the Pan Am Games. “It is really just special to me to bring that into racing and bring the community in,” she said. “It brings more meaning to the race for me, beyond what the results end up being.”