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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Wotherspoon, Niedermayer enter Canadian sports hall
Jeff McIntosh / the canadian press Speedskater Jeremy Wotherspoon (left) and bobsledder Pierre Lueders are among this year�s inductees into Canada�s Sports Hall of Fame. (CP)
CALGARY -- Imagining life without speedskating is impossible for Jeremy Wotherspoon.
"I wouldn't be here right now," he said Thursday at Canada's Sports Hall of Fame. "I probably wouldn't have ever maybe moved to Calgary after high school. I wouldn't live in Germany (coaching) right now.
"I met my wife in speedskating. Now, we have a daughter. Things would be quite different for me. It's hard to say . . . what has speedskating done for me?
"It's kind of done everything for me."
But the truth is, the 35-year-old former World Cup champion, Olympian, and one of the world's most decorated skaters has done everything and more for the sport.
So, it was no surprise Wotherspoon would eventually find himself among the greats inducted at Canada's Sports Hall of Fame.
Officially, Wotherspoon will be inducted among the class of 2012 on Oct. 18.
Joining him are hockey player Scott Niedermayer, who retired from the NHL in 2010 as an Anaheim Duck, Charmaine Hooper, one of the country's pioneers in women's soccer, figure skaters Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, Olympic rower Derek Porter and Pierre Lueders, the former king of Canadian bobsledding.
"Of course it's a huge honour," said Wotherspoon, a Red Deer, Alta., native who moved to Calgary at 17 to pursue his dream. "This is a pretty special achievement for me that I, of course, never set out to achieve."
Following the 2010 Olympics and World Cup season, Wotherspoon hung up the blades with a virtually unmatched long-track speedskating career including 67 World Cup wins, 12 overall world cup titles, four world sprint championships and a silver Olympic medal from the 1998 Nagano Games in the 500 metres.
Lueders is currently a coach with the Canadian development squad.
"I started my career in Calgary, ended it in Whistler, and to be an inductee in the Canada Sports Hall of Fame and living just down the street . . . it's a bit ironic," said Lueders, a five-time Olympian who, like Wotherspoon, retired after the 2010 Games.
-- Postmedia News
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 20, 2012 C8
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