SILENCE, DARKNESS AND GOLD: HOW DEAFBLIND MULTI-SPORT ATHLETE KEVIN FROST BECAME A WORLD CHAMPION

A former hockey referee from Ottawa turned the worst diagnosis of his life into three world titles, nine world records, and decades of service to others.

Kevin Frost was still a boy when he refereed his first hockey game, holding a whistle and the authority to call the play for everyone else. Around the same time, a grade school math teacher noticed that the boy was following lessons by reading lips more than by listening. Hearing aids and six years of speech therapy followed. Decades later, the condition that had been slowly taking his hearing began to take his sight, starting with his night vision.

In March 2002, doctors gave it a name. Usher syndrome is a rare genetic disorder that erodes hearing in childhood and vision later in life, and the diagnosis cost Frost his driver’s licence and his job. It also pulled him into a depression that, as he writes in his memoir, engulfed him.

Today, deafblind athlete Kevin Frost is a three-time World Champion speed skater, a nine-time world record holder, a provincial blind golf champion, a TEDx speaker, and the author of Deaf, Blind Champion. He lives with about 4% of his vision, narrowed to a tunnel, and less than 10% of his hearing. The road between those two versions of the same man leads straight back to the ice.

Kevin Frost Finds His Footing After an Usher Syndrome Diagnosis

The first help came from CNIB Deafblind Community Services, which connected Frost with an intervenor to assist with grocery shopping, banking, and medical appointments. That support shaped the philosophy he now shares with others. “To be successful as a person with a disability, we all have to learn to educate, listen, and be positive,” he told CNIB.

In his book, Frost describes dwelling on everything he had lost until he chose to focus on what remained: a lifetime spent around the rink and a narrow window of central vision.

Deafblind Speed Skater Kevin Frost Returns to the Rink

Mike Rivet, a friend who became his coach, introduced Frost to blind speed skating in his early thirties and trained him as a high-performance athlete. The man who once enforced the rules on the ice now had to learn the ice again at racing speed.

Over the next 25 years, Frost won world titles in short track and long track, 16 gold medals in international disability competition, and nine world records. He rose to the top of the global blind speed skating rankings. The most striking figure on his record is his 8th-place world ranking among sighted, hearing Masters skaters. In that field, he has won more than 80 medals, 18 of them gold.

In 2009, he took his skating to the Rideau Canal and covered 100 kilometres to raise $5,000 for the Rotary Home.

Rowing, Running, and Riding for Canada

Frost has held International Paralympic Committee (IPC) B2 classification for more than 20 years across five disciplines, and with Development Canada, he trained in blind rowing, blind running, and tandem cycling alongside Olympic champions and, in his words, “some of the world’s greatest coaches and trainers.” Riding behind a sighted pilot, he placed second at the Canadian Championships on the indoor track and in road racing. He met Canadian qualifying standards in every sport he entered.

In 2005, he received an international disability sports award, an honour he connects to his role model, former cabinet minister and hockey great Ken Dryden. In 2010, CTV cast him in its national “Believe” Olympic commercial. Five years later, he carried the torch at the velodrome for the 2015 Pan Am and Parapan Am Games.

Blind Golf Gives Kevin Frost a Sixth Sport

Frost picked up a golf club in 2016. On the course, he sees only the ball on the tee. His guide, Nigel Bruce, whom he met at Pine View Golf Course, handles club selection, alignment, and course navigation.

The work produced multiple Ontario Provincial Blind Golf Championships in his division, divisional success at the ISPS Handa Canadian Blind Golf Championships, and the 2023 Overall Stableford title at the Canadian Championships. That same year, Blind Golf Canada chose him for the World Blind Golf Championships in Cape Town, South Africa, where he was the only Canadian B2 player in the field. He raised the money for the trip himself. “At the end of the day, I gotta find a way to adapt,” he told CBC News.

Frost now sits on the Board of Directors of Ontario Visually Impaired Golfers and cochairs its Outreach Committee. He is pressing the International Blind Golf Association to adopt IPC sight classification, a step toward bringing blind golf into the Paralympics. “Once committed, I am all in,” as he puts it.

Two Angels and a Labradoodle Named Woody

Frost calls his first two guide dogs, Nemo and Lewis, “two angels.” Both came from Canadian Guide Dogs for the Blind. Nemo guided him for ten years and died in 2015. Lewis served nine years before kidney disease took him in late 2022. In 2023, the charity matched Frost with Woody, a black and grey Labradoodle.

Frost has repaid that gift with close to 20 years of fundraising for the charity, and he has taken up service dog incidents with corporations and provincial governments on behalf of fellow handlers.

Missions Abroad and Honours at Home

Between 2000 and 2020, Frost volunteered on humanitarian missions to Mexico and Nicaragua that helped 29 deaf children receive hearing aids. The same missions delivered visual aids to many children and dozens of blind people. At home, he has served as an honorary Lion for more than 25 years, travelling across Ontario to promote kinship and understanding.

The United Way of Ottawa gave him its Community Builder Award in 2010, and the House of Commons honoured him in 2015 as a role model for deafblind Canadians. He received the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal in February 2023 and a Letter of Commendation from Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe two months later. Nominations to the Canadian Disability Hall of Fame followed in 2024 and 2025, and the King Charles III Coronation Medal arrived in April 2025.

Deaf, Blind Champion Brings the Story to Readers

Frost published Deaf, Blind Champion: A True Story of Hope, Inspiration and Excellence in Sport and Life in October 2022. The memoir follows him from diagnosis to podium and shows readers how to find a supportive community for difficult times. A portion of the proceeds supports guide dog schools.

“Anything is possible, and no matter how tough things get, there is always going to be a new tomorrow,” he told the Orléans Star when the book launched.

That message has reached audiences through more than 500 motivational talks worldwide, including his TEDxAshburyCollege talk, “Blind, Deaf: The Magic in Being a Champion in Sport and in Life.” His life has been featured in three documentaries, 188 newspaper articles, and 62 television interviews. The book is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, the audiobook is available on Audible and Audiobooks.com, and his full record lives at deafblindspeedskater.com.