DECADE

What was the biggest story in Canadian sports?
Globe and Mail Update
Published on Sunday, Nov. 29, 2009 10:58PM EST
Last updated on Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2009 8:35AM EST

Here are five great moments chosen by champion rower Silken Laumann, who won medals for Canada in three Olympic Games and is now an author and the founder of a charitable movement dedicated to children’s recreation based in Victoria.

“There are so many great moments,” she says, “but a few really stick in my mind because they encompass some of the remarkable elements that make up Canadian sports.”

Ms. Laumann's picks:

1. Simon Whitfield winning the first gold medal in the triathlon at Sydney in 2000 and then, eight years later, having a remarkable almost gold performance in Beijing. The guy has guts.

2. Kyle Shewfelt winning Canada’s first ever Olympic gold in gymnastics. Gymnastics is a sport dominated by Eastern Europeans. To see a fellow Canadian win this event made leagues of aspiring young gymnasts believe they could do it, too.

3.The double gold – both men’s and women’s – in Olympic hockey at Salt Lake City in 2002. Did we Canadians feel on top of the world that week!

4. The men’s eight winning gold in the Beijing Games last year. They dominated – I don’t think there has ever been a group as fit, focused and determined to win. They were in a league of their own in the most highly contested event in men’s rowing.

5. Steve Nash, the first Canadian ever named the National Basketball Association’s most valuable player, an honour he received two years in a row (2004-5 and 2005-6). You don’t need to know anything about basketball to be electrified by the intensity, passion and skill this young man from Victoria brings to the court.

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