By Jim Morris

RIO DE JANERIO _ The year Danielle Dorris was born, Benoit Huot had already won six Paralympic swimming medals.

By the time a 10-year-old Dorris started swimming, Huot had collected 19 medals, nine of them gold, at four Paralympics.

Huot and Dorris will be teammates when the swimming competition begins Thursday at the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games. At 32, Huot will be competing in his fifth Paralympics. The 13-year-old Dorris is the youngest person on the 26-member team.

“It’s quite inspiring,” said Dorris, a native of Moncton, N.B., who swims in the S8 category. “In a few years that could be me.”

Craig McCord, the Paralympic Games head coach, said the team competing in Rio is set to win medals this year while keeping an eye on developing talent for Tokyo 2020 and beyond.

“I would say we are better poised for the long term,” said McCord, who has announced he is stepping down as the Para-swimming head coach after Rio. “It’s a balanced team.

“I look at the veterans we have and they are very good. I’m very excited about our younger guys. It’s going to be a good test for these guys. I think it sets us up very well for Tokyo.”

McCord is optimistic the team can reach its goal of winning 14 medals.

“I believe if we hit, we could get 20, if everyone ponies up and we get on a run the way the Olympic side got on a run,” he said.

Canadian swimmers won 16 medals (four gold, nine silver, three bronze at the 2012 London Paralympics.

Aurelie Rivard was a wide-eyed teenager four years ago but came away with a silver medal in the 400-metre freestyle. She comes into Rio the world champion in the 50-m and 400-m freestyle and the world-record holder in the 100-m freestyle.

“It feels different” this year, said Rivard, 20, an S10 swimmer from St-Jean-Sur-Richelieu, Que. “In London I was the youngest. I was just a baby. I was surrounded by so many amazing athletes who had done so much.

“Now I feel like I am part of the veterans now.”

Rivard is one of eight members of the swim team that have competed at previous Paralympics. For Katarina Roxon of Kippens, NL, and Devin Gotell of Antigonish, N.S., it will be their third Games.

The range of Paralympic rookies stretch from Tammy Cunnington, of Red Deer, Alta., a 40-year-old world-record holder in the S4 50-m butterfly, to Tess Routliffe, a 17-year-old from Caledon, Ont., who won four gold medals at last year’s Parapan American Games in Toronto.

Rivard is expected to contend for five medals while Huot is expected to reach the podium three times. Other athletes with podium potential are Routliffe, Cunnington, Roxon, Nicolas Turbide of Quebec City, Nathan Stein of Port Coquitlman, B.C., Sarah Mehain of Vernon, B.C., Morgan Bird of Calgary and Alec Elliott of Kitchener, Ont.

Canadian swimmers won a staggering 41 medals, including 20 gold, at the 2000 Sydney Paralympics. Four years later in Athens the team collected 38 medals (15 gold) then 23 (seven goal) in Beijing in 2008.

James Hood, the Para-swimming team leader, said the level of competition increases each year.

“As the Paralympic movement has grown and changed you see an increase in the new athletes from other countries,” said Hood. “Canada certainly has a number of stars over the years and had done exceptionally well.

“We still have stars and are still doing well. It’s just the whole racing pocket is compressing and getting more and more competitive every time we have one of these games.”

Dorris, who was born with only a portion of her arms, admits to some pre-competition nerves but has found the Paralympic experience liberating.

“You don’t need to be afraid of who you are and what you look like here,” she said. “We are all pretty much the same. We all have a disability.”

She also understands these Paralympics will be a stepping stone in her career.

“I’m confident enough I am going to hopefully get best times,” Dorris said. “Medals, not so much. I can try and just have fun with it all.”