Sunday, December 30, 2001
Talent, beauty the Canadian way
By GEORGE GROSS -- Corporate Sports Editor
So, Catriona Le May Doan has won the Bobbie Rosenfeld Award as Canada's female athlete of the year.
For those who are not familiar with her name, she is a formidable speed skater who combines grace and beauty with brute strength en route to world records and Olympic medals.
Catriona will be there again -- front and centre -- in Salt Lake City this February, leading the Canadian team to an Olympic medal harvest.
Canada has often been blessed with female athletes who have combined talent with attractiveness and were respected around the globe.
Some of them were, perhaps, even the most photographed athletes in Olympic competitions.
Let me start with the graceful pentathlete Diane Jones Konihowski of Calgary, who mesmerized the photographic media at the 1976 Montreal Olympics and was definitely the most photographed athlete of those Games, particularly when competing in the long jump.
Diane continued her career as an Olympic executive and was chef de mission of Canada's Olympic team at the 2000 Games in Sydney, Australia.
Another attractive star athlete was also a pentathlete -- Debbie Van Kiekebelt of Toronto.
I remember her well because my friend, John Hudson, who at one time coached talented athletes, phoned me in the office in the early 1970s and told me he had found a rare gem for the sport. I went to a Scarborough stadium and watched the then 15-year-old Debbie establish herself as the best in the world of athletes in that age category. She wound up working in the media as a television and radio personality.
While we are still at gifted and good-looking track and field athletes, we must not forget sprinter Charmaine Crooks, who captured two Olympic medals in the 400 metres and the 1600-metre relay at Los Angeles in 1984. She, too, emerged as a television and radio performer, public speaker and, most importantly, as one of the International Olympic Committee members in Canada.
One certainly couldn't overlook Sylvie Frechette, the attractive synchronized swimmer, who twice won the same Olympic gold medal in 1992. Frechette won the gold in the pool but, because of an error by a Brazilian judge, she was placed second. Only through the intervention of Dick Pound, another IOC member in Canada, was she -- more than a year later -- presented with the gold medal she actually should have been handed in the first place.
The list of talented and attractive Canadian female athletes is much longer than the space allotted to me on these pages, may they be swimmers, divers, figure skaters or women from other sports. But right now, let's all get behind Catriona Le May Doan and help her dig for gold in Utah.
In closing, let me wish all of my readers a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.
God bless.
2002 Games Long Track Speed Skating Coverage
