Down, but not out
Clara Hughes
Not even being hit by a car was enough to keep Clara Hughes from competing at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
It happened in 1999, a year after she had retired from cycling because of a nagging ankle injury. Hughes was training for the world championships when she was struck by a car a week before the competition began. She shook off her scrapes and bruises and competed at the world, finishing seventh in the time trial. At the Sydney Olympics, Hughes placed sixth in the same event then opted to retire from cycling to return to her first love, long-track speed skating.
In her first full season back on the ice following a 10-year absence, Hughes competed at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics and won a bronze medal in the 5,000-metre event. Combined with the two bronze medals she won as an Olympic cyclist in 1996, the Salt Lake showing made Hughes the only Canadian to win medals in both the Summer and Winter Games.
At the 2006 Turin Olympics, Hughes climbed even higherup the podium, winning a silver medal in the team pursuit and gold in the 5,000 metres.Alexandra Orlando
It will cost rhythmic gymnast Alexandra Orlando as much as $75,000 to keep chasing her Olympic dream to Beijing this summer.
The woman who coached the Toronto university student left to take a post in Spain because there wasn’t enough support to keep her coaching in Canada.
“It’s too late to think of getting another coach,” said Orlando. “Mimi Masleva is one of the best and she’s coached me since I was seven. So, when I need to get together with her for a coaching session, my family has to pay for a plane ticket to get me to Spain. It costs between $50,000 and $75,000 a year for me to stay in this sport at the top level.
“I get $1,500 a month in federal carding money as an elite athlete, but that’s not enough to live and train on,” Orlando added. “So I’m living with my parents while I’m studying for my exams in politics, philosophy and economics.”
A five-time national champion, she swept six gold medals in a record-tying performance at the 2006 Commonwealth Games at Melbourne then took three more gold medals at the 2007 Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro. She likely would have swept the table there as well, except for a bizarre equipment malfunction in which her ribbon separated from its wand and fluttered away.
At 21, she’s headed for her first, and probably only Olympic Games.
Silken Laumann
Silken Laumann’s story is the stuff television movies are made into, which is exactly what happened to her tale of triumph (See Golden Will: The Silken Laumann Story, 1996).
Laumann was warming up for a regatta prior to the 1992 Barcelona Olympics when the scull of a German coxless pairs boat cut across her path and rammed its pointed bow into her lower right leg. “I looked at the leg for a few seconds and I knew it was serious when my muscle was hanging at my ankle and I could see the bone,” Laumann said.
She required several operations to repair the nerve and muscle damage in her leg but was back on the water training within a month. She wore a knee brace and gritted her teeth through the pain and when the Olympic singles scull event was held she raced to a third-place finish that seemed every bit as glorious as winning the gold medal.
As Laumann’s former coach Fred Loek described it: “The performance spoke to people’s imaginations.” It still speaks of courage and willpower.
Arturo Huerta
Arturo Huerta was not an athlete in his native Mexico. But race walking is a national passion there, just as hockey is in Canada. You’re born knowing how to do it.
Huerta didn’t take up training until he came to Canada in 1987. He was one grateful immigrant. He said he was looking for some talent he could put to the service of his new country – even if it was a geeky, shambling strut.
He became a Canadian citizen in June 1996, just in time for the Atlanta Olympics, and was apologetic when the best he could do was 41st in the 20 km.
So he took it upon himself to make it right, representing Canada everywhere he could. He made world championship teams in 1997 and 2001. When he wasn’t slinging lumber in his orange Home Depot apron, he waved the flag at fund-raisers and made himself do the funny walk in brutal heat and smog to toughen himself up for a silver-medal performance at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur.
“I will go through it all, just to wear the colour of Canada, anywhere, under any circumstances,” Huerta said. In 1999, he got as high as 10th in the world rankings and in 2000, he set the Canadian record for the 20 km, which still stands.
Anne Montminy
Long before Anne Montminy became a lawyer, she had to get familiar with the legal process. As a 17-year-old, she was nominated for the Barcelona Olympic squad by the Canadian Amateur Diving Association, but left off the team by the Canadian Olympic Association, which declared she didn’t meet the criteria of being likely to finish in the top half.
Over the COA’s protests, a Quebec judge granted an order of safeguard, restoring her to the team. Dick Pound called it “a very unfortunate precedent,” saying courts should have no involvement selecting teams when they don’t have technical expertise.
Montminy went to Barcelona and almost made the final. She won support from chef de mission Ken Read who said: “The moment you’re named to a team is a moment you should be proud of. You shouldn’t have to fight your way on.”
“I don’t think there should be any shame in people taking their best athletes to the Olympics,” Montminy said in Barcelona. “But there was also pressure on me because of what happened. In the end, it bothered me. It wasn’t supposed to affect me, but it did. I’ve learned a lot and I’ve grown up a lot through this. I’ll be back.”
True to her word, Montminy went on to become one of Canada’s greatest divers. A three-time Olympian, she took gold at the 1994 Commonwealth and 1995 Pan American Games and two Olympic medals at Sydney in 2000
