Girard enters Hall of Fame with grace, integrity
Hall of Fame nod the ‘cherry on top’ for Olympic weightlifter
Christine Girard enters the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame with as much grace and perspective as she displayed after the gold and bronze medals that were rightfully hers arrived so many years later — after first being claimed by drug cheats.
The first Canadian weightlifter to win an Olympic title — she competed in the 63-kilogram class — was humbled by the call to the hall and embraced the responsibility that she believes comes with it.
“I feel, because I retired so long ago in 2015 and now I have three young kids and I’m back to school, that I’m well into my second life, if I can use that term,” the 34-year-old said Monday from her home in Gatineau, Que.
“So this is like the cherry on top of the sundae. I was really happy with my career and what I’ve been doing and now I try to be as vocal as I can about anti-doping and our values as Canadians. This will help me do that a bit more.
“We have to be proud to be Canadians and I think my medals show our values and I’m glad (the Canadian Olympic Committee) recognized it as well. It’s not about just how we perform at the Olympics. We’re elite athletes who are named to the Hall of Fame and it’s all about what is the value we bring to our country? I think it gives even more weight to the message and the fight that I want to take on now, so I’m pretty happy for that.”
Girard joined the hall along with triathlete Simon Whitfield; divers Alexandre Despatie and Emilie Heymans; judo coach Hiroshi Nakamura; the Canadian women’s 2010 hockey team and 2012 soccer team; the late Jack Poole, who led the Vancouver 2010 bid; and the late Randy Starkman, who covered Olympic athletes so well for the Toronto Star.
“It’s all people who I admire so deeply and who changed the vision we have of sport in Canada,” said Girard. “As my husband said, ‘That’s what it’s all about.’ I’m humbled. I’m really honoured.”
She and husband Walter
Bailey and their three young children moved from Surrey,
B.C., to Gatineau in June 2018, six months before receiving the Olympic medals she had been denied by Kazakh and Russian dopers at Beijing 2008 and London 2012.
Girard originally won the bronze in the 63-kilogram class at the 2012 Games. After a retesting of blood samples in 2016, however, the gold and silver medal winners — from Kazakhstan and Russia — were stripped of their medals for steroid use. Girard got her gold.
In 2016, Girard also learned she had won a bronze from the 2008 Games, bumped up from fourth place when the original silver medallist from Kazakhstan also tested positive for steroids.
Bailey took a job transfer while Girard has immersed herself in a master’s of occupational therapy at the University of Ottawa. Throw in the book she finished writing in 2018, which details those four difficult years between finishing fourth in Beijing and being upgraded to bronze, and now Monday’s hall induction and it has been quite a ride.
“(The book) helped me realize how important those years were for me and how it shaped who I am now. To be able to value what I have instead of focusing on what I didn’t and will never have.
“I find it funny when people say I actually got a medal in 2008 because I’m like, ‘No, no, I got it in 2018.’ It doesn’t change what I went through. I will always have finished fourth in Beijing even though I got a medal 10 years later. It helped me make peace with that.
“I will never really consider myself an Olympic champion because I got my gold medal six years later. I will always have finished third in London. I don’t know if it makes any sense, but it helped me make peace with that when I wrote my book. It was pretty therapeutic.” dbarnes@postmedia.com Twitter.com/sportsdanbarnes