FROM COUCH SURFER TO MODEL OLYMPIAN
She could’ve been watching Cosby or Roseanne, the hit sitcoms of the era. Angela Lansbury sleuthing on Murder She Wrote. Or Sam Malone and the gang trading wisecracks at Cheers, the bar where everybody knows your name.
Instead, 16-year-old Clara Hughes happened to find something else channelsurfing that day, just another day, at her mom’s home in Winnipeg.
An unexpected attention grabber from Calgary. A feature on speedskater Gaetan Boucher, Canadian hero of Sarajevo four years earlier, in search of one final defining race, one last podium performance, in the 1,500 metres at the 1988 Winter Olympic Games.
“I’ll never forget it,’‘ she recalled, voice still, amazingly, full of wonder, during a conference call on late Friday afternoon. “It was the first time as a young person that I’d seen people pushing themselves to be the best they could be. I watched, and something inside me told me I wanted to do it. There was a transformation.
“I’m so glad I flipped to the right channel in my mom’s living room.’‘
She was hooked. Instantly. On speed skating. On the Olympics in the purest sense, their power and their passion. When she calls the moment a “transformation,” an epiphany, it’s not mere wordplay. This was a not atypical Canadian teenager two decades ago, someone who enjoyed partying, a few pints and a pack-a-day cigarette habit. Yet the image of Gaetan Boucher transfixed her, pushed her onto the cycling track, eventually to Atlanta and to Sydney; then onto the ice, to Salt Lake and Turin and now, as a glorious farewell, to Vancouver.
The image of her spent but joyous celebration, having overcome all obstacles in arguably the most compelling event of the 2006 Games, the women’s 5,000 metres, remains a cameo keepsake for all those who were witness. She represents the best of us, as corny as that might sound.
Hughes is so much more than an athlete, however.
The product of a broken home, this is an advocate of women — no, of people, their possibilities and potential — a champion of Right to Play, the athlete-driven humanitarian cause. For those who condescendingly slough off the promotional tag line “power of sport,” ridicule the often-compromised ideals the Olympic Games were based upon as hopelessly archaic and dysfunctional in today’s crass commercialization of virtually everything, Clara Hughes offers a hopeful reminder, a firm rebuttal.
Yes, it can still be that way. For those who so choose.
She has used her profile, to help others, donating $10,000 of her own to Right to Play in the wake of her inspirational victory in Turin, has helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars since and given her time to numerous worthwhile causes.
So on Friday, the Canadian Olympic Committee confirmed the week’s worst-kept secret, naming Hughes, five-time Olympic medal winner, as this country’s flag-bearer for the Vancouver 2010 Games. The Maple Leaf could not be in more capable hands.
Accepting the flag from chef de mission Nathalie Lamber at Richmond City Hall, an emotional Hughes said: “To all of Canada: this is our time. This! We will (compete) with the energy of all of Canada inside. We will compete with dignity, with integrity, with respect.”
Three sacred mantras she holds dear.
“Clara represents what we want to be as a Canadian team,” Canadian Olympic Committee CEO Chris Rudge told the Vancouver Sun at the announcement ceremony. “The team’s going there to win, so someone who’s had success is important, but they want that person to be someone they can be proud of, someone who does not lose sight of the things that are important as a human being — and I don’t know of any athlete in this country who embodies all of those things the way Clara does.’‘
Typically, rather than being cowed by the attention, she embraces it: “It’s going to give me an inspiration I’ve never felt before.’‘
Hughes, too, can feel a stirring of the competitive juices as these Games near; an electric current pulsating among Canadians athletes to deliver the goods at home.
“I feel like everybody’s ready and excited. There’s just a confidence. Every single person on our (long-track) team feels it. I know that. There’s just a little different vibe from other Olympic teams, because of the preparation and resources involved this time.’‘
With the day of her announcement as flag-bearer as much about looking back as looking ahead to Feb. 12, when the sight of her at the front of a 206-athlete parade will trigger an explosion of noise at B.C. Place, Hughes reflected on the bitterly cold winter days at the oval in Winnipeg, and on a mother who encouraged a daughter’s interest in anything, be it sports or the arts.
“The potential,’‘ she said of these Games, “is there to inspire a generation of young people in Canada. I urge parents and teachers and to encourage young people to pursue their dreams. I see so many possibilities in so many. It doesn’t have to be sports. As long as it moves you forward.
“I know how (the Olympics) changed my life.’‘
Who can tell? Maybe a couple of weeks from now a drifting 16-year-old somewhere in this country will be channel surfing from Lost or Glee or American Idol, and happen upon an unexpected attention-grabber originating out of Vancouver. A feature focusing on a woman pushing to be the best she possibly can, a hero of four years ago in search of one final defining race, one last podium performance.
And maybe he or she will be transfixed, be transformed, watching, too.
