Claudia Pechstein, Clara Hughes and Cindy Klassen on the podium in Turin
Photo credit: Canadian Press
Nation Builders Nominees: Clara Hughes and Cindy Klassen
Canada is not a country where long-track speed skating has much of a regular following.
And yet last February, this big and very diverse nation was riveted to a skating oval in Turin, Italy, where Cindy Klassen and Clara Hughes combined for seven medals at the Winter Olympic Games.
And when they stood together on the podium after their final race on the second-last day of the Games, smiling and singing, it became the lasting image of Canada’s most successful Olympics ever.
“For me it was a spontaneous thing,” said Ms. Hughes, who won gold in that 5,000-metre race, while Ms. Klassen captured bronze. “I just thought that I am so happy and I want everyone to see this joy. When I stood on the podium and the anthem started, I remember thinking, ‘What do I do?’ Then I looked back and saw Cindy and she had a big grin and I said, ‘Get up here.’ And then we started singing badly.
“I think there should be no protocol for the podium. It was our way of doing it and it was the perfect ending for the Games.”
It was only later, upon returning to Canada, that the women got a true sense of how much Canadians had shared in that moment and others.
Amateur sport in Canada receives little attention outside of Olympic Games. And yet as Ms. Klassen and Ms. Hughes proved, it can awaken something within us and provide a sense of shared experience unlike anything else.
Which is part of why both women are determined to be around to compete in their home country in 2010, when the Olympics come to Vancouver.
“I really brings the nation together,” Ms. Klassen, 27, said. “I’ve been from Victoria to Halifax and everywhere I go they talk about the Olympics. Especially with 2010 coming up, everyone is so excited about amateur sport like I’ve never seen before. One of the greatest things is running into people and they tell you how their kids are getting involved in sports because of how well we did.”
Ms. Klassen finished the Games as the all-time most decorated Canadian Olympian with six medals, five of which were won in Turin. Ms. Hughes has five, including two from Turin.
And yet for two athletes who have achieved such heights, both came to speed skating from other sports at a relatively late stage of their competitive development. Ms. Klassen turned to speed skating only after a promising career in hockey ended with her failing to make the women’s national team in the spring of 1997. The crushing disappointment at age 18, however, turned to opportunity when she ventured to the Susan Auch Oval in Winnipeg, albeit hesitantly at first.
“It’s about starting over again and giving it your all when it’s not the best situation in your life,” Ms. Klassen said. “It’s really strange. Back then it just seemed as if I’d just go to school and sports would be in the background. It’s really interesting how things turn around. It just shows you there are always other paths to take.”
Ms. Hughes’s path to speed skating was even less conventional. She began skating at 16 but left the sport shortly afterwards when recruited to cycling, a discipline in which she won two Olympic bronze medals at Atlanta in 1996. After competing again in Sidney at the 2000 Summer Games, she decided to return to skating at age 27, the time around which many athletes are in their prime.
“I hope it shows people it is absolutely never too late,” Ms. Hughes, 34, said. “If you have a passion and an interest in something, you have to try because you never know where it may take you. I hope that inspires people to try something they’ve maybe always wanted to do.”
Beyond their competitive success, Ms. Klassen and Ms. Hughes are set apart by the manner in which they’ve become true role models, living up to the ideals of inspiring others in both sport and life.
Ms. Klassen, recently named the winner of the Lou Marsh Award as Canada’s athlete of the year, and Ms. Hughes, a four-time Olympian, are as widely recognized in Canada as many professional athletes. And yet somehow they seem so much closer, so much more in touch, with those who follow their success.
“Sometimes you don’t realize the impact you can have on people,” Ms. Klassen said. “It’s pretty neat to see the kids, and when they recognize you from TV you can see the fire in their eyes and how excited they are. Here [in Calgary] at the oval so many kids are speed skating and they’re pumped up about the sport because of us.”
Outside of skating, Ms. Klassen devotes her time to the Mennonite Central Committee, a development and peace agency for which she travelled to Africa this past summer and is a spokesperson on issues related to people living with HIV.
Ms. Hughes, meanwhile, has devoted herself to Right To Play, the athlete-driven humanitarian organization founded by Norwegian speed skater Johann Koss which uses play and sport as development tools for children in war-torn and impoverished countries.
It was in the moments after her gold-medal win in the 5,000-metre race that Ms. Hughes announced she was donating $10,000 from her personal funds to Right to Play. She followed that up with a visit this summer to Africa, where she witnessed some of the Right To Play programs in action.
The recognition she has received for her humanitarian contributions has demonstrated to Ms. Hughes the true potential of athletes.
“What the kids continue to write to me about is what I did with Right To Play,” Ms. Hughes said. “Those kids saw me winning, but what stuck with them was what I did with that success. That’s the message I’m trying to get out: It’s not what you do at the Olympics but what you do with it afterward.
“It’s easy to be pessimistic about the Western world, but when I see kids with this kind of response it just gives me so much hope.”
