Wendy Long
Vancouver
On the slopes she humbled rivals and won medals with a skiing style that combined tenacity with an effervescent enthusiasm for racing.
AP Files / TOP FLIGHT: Nancy Greene cuts down the hill during the women’s special slalom at Grenoble, France, during 1968 Winter Olympics.
Off the slopes she charmed spectators and media alike with a gregarious yet direct personality that made her a popular ambassador for her sport and one of its greatest stars.
Nancy Greene Raine remains one of the most beloved and recognizable ambassadors in alpine skiing and is the most decorated racer in Canadian ski racing history.
So it was not surprising that 56-year-old Greene was honoured Monday as Canada’s female athlete of the century in a survey of newspaper editors and broadcasters by The Canadian Press and Broadcast News.
“It’s humbling, in a way, because Canada has such a history of producing tremendous women athletes yet people don’t always know the history, know all the names,” she said in a telephone interview from Sun Peaks near Kamloops.
“I am thrilled yet overwhelmed. There are so many great women athletes, some incredible performances.”
Nancy Greene topped the poll with 933 points followed by rower Silken Laumann at 813 and figure skater Barbara Ann Scott at 724.
Greene was the second of six children and grew up in Rossland, honing her skills on the steep and challenging slopes of Red Mountain. By the age of 16 she competed in her first Olympics, finishing 21st in downhill at the 1960 Games in Squaw Valley, rooming with venerable Anne Heggtveit, who won the Olympic gold in slalom.
Four years later Greene finished seventh in the downhill at the Olympics in Innsbruck. She later emerged as the first woman star on the fledgling World Cup circuit, taking the over-all title with four giant slalom victories, plus two in slalom and one in downhill, in the inaugural 1966-67 season.
As fate would have it World Cup founder Serge Lang, whose vision of an international ski circuit offered Greene the opportunities to truly become the world’s best, died of a heart attack on Sunday
“He was an amazing man,” she said. “He had a global vision that went beyond the European domination of the sport.”
But it was in 1968 that Greene, by then affectionately known as Tiger for her tenacious approach to racing, secured a permanent spot in the minds and hearts of Canadians. At the Olympics in Grenoble she earned a gold medal in giant slalom and silver in slalom.
Those accomplishments alone would make her a national hero but the combination of skiing success, quick smile and gamine hairstyle, and her ease in front of television cameras, made Greene one of the most recognized and revered of Canadian athletes, not just in 1968 but through to today.
She capped her Olympic triumph with another World Cup over-all victory in 1968, then she retired at age 24. Marriage to ski coach Al Raine followed as did the birth of twin sons Willy and Charley.
But unlike many athletes who retire, Greene did not leave her sport but instead found other significant ways of remaining involved.
For more than 30 years the Nancy Greene Ski League has served as an entry level race program for young children.
Nancy and Al Raine went on to develop Blackcomb Mountain at Whistler and for several years operated a hotel there until their 1994 move to Sun Peaks.
“There’s more pressure because of the corporate sponsorship and worrying about having to live to to the expectations of sponsors,” she said when asked to compare her life as a ski racer with current national team members. “The opportunities to train are certainly greater, we had to work in the summer to save enough money for racing in the winter.”
As is her way, Greene finds a way to deflect conversation away from herself and her most recent laurel: Equal cause for celebration is today’s official season opening at Sun Peaks. And isn’t it great that Nanaimo’s Alison Forsyth earned a top-five finish recently on the World Cup?
“I think what it takes to succeed remains the same,” she continued. “You have to have a real love of your sport to carry you through all the bad times, you still want to go ski even when things aren’t working. You must have a commitment to work hard and to never give up.”
TOP 10 FEMALE ATHLETES:
1. Nancy Greene (933)
2. Silken Laumann (813)
3. Barbara Ann Scott (724)
4. Myriam Bedard (693)
5. Marnie McBean (545)
6. Bobbie Rosenfeld (420)
7. Catriona Le May Doan (389)
8. Sandra Post (380)
9. Marilyn Bell (292)
10. Elaine Tanner (244)
The program, building off a four-year-old pilot project in Victoria, has 200 prospective rowers lined up to learn from experts and Olympians in seven cities across Canada, said Laumann, the national spokeswoman.
“There are many great sport programs reaching out to youth,” the four-time Olympian said. “But the experience of rowing together is a little unique. You have to depend on each other so much. If you don’t show up to practice, your boat doesn’t go out. “It’s a lesson about being dependable, being responsible to one another.”
The national co-ordinator of the program is Colleen Miller, also an Olympian from the women’s lightweight double in 1996. The name sponsor is Dynamic Mutual Funds, which has been the national rowing team’s major sponsor for several years.
Other program sponsors include Rowing Canada; the Optimist Clubs of Canada, which provides transportation to and from rowing venues for the underprivileged kids; the Rock Solid Foundation, a group of law enforcement personnel who train the rowing instructors on how to deal with high-risk youth; and Foundation 2000 Plus, a non-profit amateur athletic association dedicated to sharing the benefits of rowing and paddling sports with Canadians of all ages and abilities.
Laumann said that though she wasn’t a child in danger of getting into crime, she lacked direction and self-esteem as a youngster and rowing provided her with a set of life skills that were transferable to other areas, such as teamwork, discipline and communication.
“Rowing provided a place to go, a community where people cared about what I did and what I achieved,” she said. The national centres are in Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Mississauga and Fredericton. “When I see companies and organizations come forward to help the grassroots — after a decade when budget cuts hurt development — I want to jump up and down an scream, ‘Yea,’ Laumann said. “It’s rewarding to see a company that’s involved at the national team level support the grassroots, too. They’e supporting not just a few athletes, but a whole sport.” It’s rewarding not only for the youth involved but the instructors, Laumann said.
“Laryssa Biesenthal coached one kid she thought was the roughest, toughest, most swearing case,” Laumann said. “And when the five-week program was done, she saw he went out for his school team. “She burst into tears. She’d reached him.”
Candidates are recommended for the program by schools, social agencies and police groups, she said.
reprinted with permission
