Canada’s Mel Pemble left the Paris velodrome on Saturday with a world record to her credit, and a fourth place finish on the scoreboard.

Pemble (Victoria, B.C.) broke the women’s C3 500-metre time trial world record in the qualifiers with a time of 38.512 in her summer Paralympics debut, on Saturday in Paris.

She was also the fastest C3 in the final, but because this event includes C1 and C2 athletes, who are given a percentage time bonus, the Canadian wound up in fourth and out of the medals.

Pemble broke the previous record set by Australia’s Aniek van den Aarssen’s 39.093 set at the 2022 World Championships in the same venue. 

In the final, the 24-year-old Canadian just fell short of the podium 0.3 seconds behind third place. She started strong and just missed her world record time set hours before. 

The gold medal went to Amanda Reid (C2) of Australia, silver to Wangwei Qian (C1) of China, and bronze to Maike Hausberger (C2) of Germany.

“The world record is going to make that fourth place sting a little less in the end, but I think it’s going to take a little while for me to get over that,” said Pemble, to Cycling Canada. “I’m very happy with my times, I got a personal best by a second which is more than could hope for, but it would have been amazing to win a medal.

“It just wasn’t in the cards this year.”  

Pemble won gold and silver at the 2023 Parapan American Games, was a 2022 and 2023 women’s C3 world champion in Omnium style, and earned five medals between the 2022 and 2023 World Championships.

She was named Victoria’s female athlete of the year and Sport BC’s Athlete with a Disability of the Year, and was selected from CanadianCyclist.com reader voting as the women’s Para cyclist of 2022 with 74 per cent of the first-place votes. 

In 2020 she made the switch to Para cycling from Para alpine skiing (competing in the 2018 Winter Paralympics) after feeling like she had enough experience. 

Pemble was born with cerebral palsy, affecting the right side of her body.