Manitoba’s women are leading the way

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/12/2019 (2438 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As we enter the third decade of the 21st century, let’s look back at highlights in our province during the past 20 years.

Most sports fans would rate the return of a NHL team to Winnipeg in 2011 as the major highlight. The Jets reaching the NHL’s Western Conference final in 2018 would be another.

In 2017, Winnipeg hosted the 50th anniversary of the Canada Summer Games. More than 4,000 athletes participated in 20 sports and a volunteer crew of  6,000 helped make the Games a great success.

A fourth highlight came just recently — on Nov. 24, when the Blue Bombers won the Grey Cup for the first time since 1990.

In the eyes of this columnist, though, it’s the accomplishments of our female athletes that should top any list.

Start with speed skater Cindy Klassen, who won one gold, two silver and three bronze medals at the Winter Olympic Games in 2002 in Salt Lake City and in 2006 in Turin, Italy. She was named Canada’s top athlete of 2006 and won Manitoba female athlete-of-the-year honours four times between 2002 and 2006.

When Elmwood’s Clara Hughes won bronze in the 5,000-metre speed skating race at the 2010 Winter Olympics, she tied Klassen as the Canadian female athlete with the most Olympic medals, at six. Three of those came in speed skating in 2002 and 2006, and she also won two bronze medals in cycling at the 1996 Summer Olympics.

Three Jennifers also belong on any list of great female athletes produced in our province.
On the hockey rink, Jennifer Botterill, who got her start in Fort Garry, has three Olympic gold medals in her trophy case as a member of Canada’s  winning teams at the 2002, 2006 and 2010 Winter Olympic Games. She was voted as most valuable player at the World Championships in 2001 and 2004 when Canada won the title.

No one should question Jennifer Jones of the St. Vital Curling Club being rated at the top of any list of great Manitoba female curlers.

Jones skipped her team of Kaitlyn Lawes, Jill Officer and Dawn McEwen to gold at the 2014 Winter Olympics. She also won six Canadian titles with three different thirds — Cathy Overton-Clapham, Lawes and Shannon Birchard — and Team Jones also won the world championship in 2008 and 2018. Officer threw second stones for Jones from the 2003-04 season through 2017-18.

When Lawes won gold at the 2018 Winter Olympics in the mixed doubles event, she became the first female curler to win two gold medals.

Jennifer number three is racquetball player Jennifer Saunders, who announced her retirement from competition on Dec. 2. The Thompson resident won 11 national singles titles and 13 doubles championships in her unparalleled Canadian racquetball career. At the worlds, she captured two silver and two bronze in singles and five more medals in doubles and the team event.

Her final medal was a bronze at the 2019 Pan American Racquetball Championships.

In late November, Saunders was appointed administrator of high performance and sport development for Racquetball Canada and the best news is that she will not be moving and will work out of our province.     

Many other female athletes represented our province nationally and internationally with distinction over the past 20 years.

Swimmer Chantal Van Landeghem, disabled swimmer Kirby Cote, hockey players Delaney Collins and Jocelyne Larocque, wheelchair athlete Michelle Stilwell, soccer star Desiree Scott (a two-time Olympic bronze medalist), softball’s Sandy and Heather Newsham, lawn bowlers Clarice Fitzpatrick and Shirley Fitzpatrick-Wong, badminton’s Kara Solmundson, boxer Olivia Gerula, taekwondo’s

Dominique Bosshart; the list goes on and on.

In the year 2000, speed skater Susan Auch, cyclist Tanya Dubnicoff, curler Connie Laliberte, softball player and curler Joan Ingram, and the eventual winner, cyclist and speed skater Sylvia Burka, were the five finalists for Manitoba female amateur athlete of the 20th century.

When you rate their outstanding accomplishments against the best of the past 20 years, you have to wonder how many would still be on a top five list today.

Memories of Sport appears every second week in the Canstar Community News weeklies. Kent Morgan can be contacted at 204-489-6641 or email: sportsmemories@canstarnews.com