Laumann's spirit an inspiration to students leaders

The owner of the shiniest bronze medal in Olympic Games history is all in favour of coed sports competition. And why not?

Silken Laumann spent three years training with the Canadian men's rowing team, after all, and it led to a world record and two Olympic medals.

Laumann is retired from competition but showed yesterday she has lost none of the verve that took her from a wheelchair and into the heat of Olympic competition for one of the most remarkable comebacks in Canadian sports history.

It came through loud and clear during her address to about 1,000 high school student council members at the Ontario Student Leadership Conference.

The Lamplighter Inn conference centre was buzzing to begin with. When Laumann hit the stage, the resulting electricity could have solved Ontario Hydro woes for a month.

The thrust of her vibrant talk was about dreams.

Follow yours, she told the rapt assembly.

When Silken speaks, they listen.

It was Laumann who battled back from a serious injury, arose from her wheelchair to fly to the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and literally walked with the aid of a cane to her single scull to compete.

More on that in a minute.

What about the recent incursions of women into men's games -- of Hayley Wickenheiser making a professional hockey team in Finland or golfer Annika Sorenstam dropping the L off the LPGA for a shot at the guys?

Laumann feels both can benefit.

"Any time you're given an opportunity to improve, it should be welcomed," she said.

Sure, but what about the guys?

"I think it pushed them, too," she said. "I wouldn't back down when everyone was single sculling for training.

"They had to work just as hard, as well. They could see I was just as tough as they were."

Not that Laumann ever wanted to be "one of the guys" or harbours any notion women will be beating men any time soon across a range of sports. She's a realist.

But that doesn't mean anyone has to take a back seat to anyone. You cannot be anything other than the best you can be and Laumann uses her forum to drive that point home with the youngsters she so enjoys addressing around the country. It's a mantra she has repeated since retiring after the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, much of it on behalf of Ronald McDonald House.

"I feel I can make a difference, especially with young people. Something I'm getting focused on just now is kids' health," the mother of two said, "the relationship between physical education, health and academic performance."

As for her dreams, Laumann dreamed she could be the best after seeing tiny Nadia Comaneci become the star of the 1976 Montreal Olympics with a gymnastics tour de force that earned straight 10s. She was 11 years old at the time.

But it wasn't so muc girls body image,where to play sports, girls self-esteem, girls soccer, girls cycling, girls and nutrition, nutrition for active girls, Canadian Association for women and sport, girls@play, snowboarding, skating, boarding, girl site, sports girl, extreme girl, mountain biking, skateboards, surfboards, X Games">

Talk about being torpedoed. She was training in Essen, Germany, amid a large multi-national group when a boat slammed into hers.

"I looked at one of the men's eyes and he was staring at my leg," she recalled. "I looked down and could see the bone in my right leg."

She suffered a broken leg, nerve damage, ligament and muscle injuries in her calf and ankle and had dozens of splinters in her leg. Surgeons told her she'd never row again, let alone in 10 weeks at the Olympic Games.

"I couldn't accept the doctor's words."

So she set about training immediately in her hospital bed, using bungee cords to pull on between her seven operations, and worked up from there.

Something few knew at Barcelona was that Laumann could barely walk the 200 metres to the boat house to train. Getting to the starting line was an achievement in itself, powering with a last-ditch sprint for the bronze the stuff of legends.

"It was the dream that got me there," she told her awed audience.