July 21, 2004
By Jennifer McIntyre, CBC Sports Online

Susan Nattrass: Her aim is true

It may seem disconcerting that a shooter is so accident prone, but when an Olympic berth is on the line, Nattrass doesn't miss the mark

In her own words, Dr. Susan Nattrass is a "klutz" -- not the sort of thing you want to hear from someone whose claim to fame involves handling loaded firearms.

"One of my friends used to call me 'CJ' for 'Calamity Jane,'" laughs the 53-year-old trap shooter.

Anyone who follows shooting would find this hard to believe, as Nattrass has had one of the most illustrious careers in the history of women's sport in Canada. She won six world championships in a row -- a feat unmatched by any other shooter -- and has two World Cup gold medals, as well as two silver and three bronze to her name.

She is an Officer of the Order of Canada, she beat Wayne Gretzky in voting for Canadian Athlete of the Year in 1981, and she's responsible for women being allowed to compete in trap shooting for the first time at the Montreal Games in 1976, when they shot alongside the male competitors.

Over the course of her career, she has been a university phys-ed instructor, a journalist and the Director of Women's Athletics at the University of Alberta. She also successfully lobbied the International Olympic Committee to include a separate women's trap shooting event, which made its debut at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

A self-described overachiever, Nattrass is now in her fourth career, heading an osteoporosis research clinic in Seattle and has already made four trips to the Olympics (1976, 1988, 1992 and 2000). That would be enough for most lifetimes, but she had her sights set on attending Athens this year.

And that's when things began to go horribly wrong.

"In women's trap, there are 12 quota spots for all the women in the world to compete for," explains Nattrass, who will be the oldest competitor in the field in Athens. "That's it. (But) it seemed like I was a walking disaster every time I went to one of these (competitions) for the quota spot."

Shooting herself in the foot

Remember the klutz factor? Earlier this season, just hours before she was due to fly to the world championships in Nicosia, Cyprus, Nattrass fell down a hole and broke two of her toes.

"I was getting my house renovated," she explains. "I was just about done so I'd moved back in -- except I hadn't got those grids over the heat ducts. Two hours before I was catching the plane, I fell into one. I was doing so well throughout the morning avoiding it, climbing around it, and then POOM! Right in the hole!"

She laughs about it now, but it the timing was catastrophic. Still, she was determined to make the trip to the worlds. She phoned her builder, who also happens to be a paramedic, and asked his advice. Naturally enough, he urged her to go straight to the hospital, and just as naturally, Nattrass refused. Instead, she applied some hasty first aid to her foot, and made it to the airport on time.

Insane, maybe, but time and opportunity were in increasingly short supply for Nattrass.

"This was my last chance to win the Olympic quota spot, because at the Pan Am Games my gun broke. It not only broke once, it broke in three out of the four rounds. In the final it broke, so I had to borrow a receiver to put on my gun because no one could figure out what the heck had got broken.

"The year before at the world championships," says Nattrass, continuing her litany of hard luck, "I developed two abscesses on my cheek side where I hold the shotgun, below my tooth. It was painful -- I just wanted someone to shoot me!"

Ironically, though, Nattrass's broken toes turned out to be a blessing in the long run.

"At the world championships in Cyprus, I talked to Horst Schreiber, who's the Secretary General of the International Sport Shooting Federation (ISSF), and I said I had heard something about a hardship case quota spot, and (asked) how would one qualify," she says.

"He looked at my limping and said, 'You need to write a letter.'"

She wrote that letter in February of this year, requesting consideration for a "hardship case" quota spot. But a short time later, Schreiber informed her that she was ineligible because Canada had already won several quota spots, and the rest were being reserved for countries that had no qualified shooters.

"I was just devastated," she recalls.

"It's a good thing I live on just one floor"

She bid her teammates goodbye and planned to spend the summer working on her golf game and entertaining family and friends at her homes on Vashon Island, off the coast of Washington State, and in Gibson, BC.

What she didn't know, however, was that three of the four Canadian shooters who had won Olympic spots at the Pan Am Games -- Ty Bietz, Clayton Miller and Sharon Bowes -- had just been told by the Canadian Olympic Committee that they didn't meet its new more stringent (and controversial) qualifying standards.

The COC was about to return the quota spots to the International Olympic Committee, and Nattrass wasted no time making her next move.

"I sent an email saying, if you're thinking of returning them, would you please consider keeping one and hearing my appeal. I presented how, compared to all the women who were going to be in the Olympics, I was in the top 12, and I would place in the top 12 (in Athens).

"The Committee saw that I did win the silver medal in the world championships, I had been top six in World Cups, medalled at World Cups. So they decided they would ask the ISSF if they could exchange one of them for women's trap -- and they said, 'Yes.'"

"I just thought it was a miracle," says Nattrass, who also describes herself as a very religious person. "Wow, what a blessing.

"But unfortunately not for my friends, my teammates," she adds wistfully. "I feel badly for them, but on the other hand I feel pretty thrilled for me."

With her latest mission accomplished, Nattrass has plenty to keep her busy before she heads off to Greece. In addition to handing over her workload at the clinic to her two "excellent" study coordinators, she is preparing for the Canadian Championships in Saskatoon in July, which she will attend with her mother, who has also been her coach since Nattrass was 18 years old.

"She's watched enough and she knows me well enough. She just knows what I need," says Nattrass, whose father taught her to shoot when she was a child.

But most of all, Nattrass, who broke yet another toe last November "after not paying attention as I walked down some stairs," will be trying to stay out of harm's way. Her secret weapon?

"The guy that did the renovation," she says, "his wife and kids presented me with these big furry slippers to be worn the week before I leave for any major event, particularly the Olympics!

"It's just a riot. They're leopard-spotted and they're just a kick."

She laughs before adding, "It's a good thing I live on just one floor!"

reprinted with permission