The chef de mission
> CURT HARNETT
Curt Harnett vividly recalls the whirlwind of his first Pan Am Games.
It was in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1983, a little more than a year after the broad-shouldered teenager with curly blond hair departed training camp for the Ontario Hockey League’s London Knights, choosing a career in cycling over hockey.
“I was 18, still green, in fact red because of my complexion, and I was just getting used to the whole idea of village life,” he recalls.
“We showed up at the athletes’ village and we didn’t have windows and the mattresses weren’t in our rooms. We had to wait until 11 or midnight before our mattresses finally got in there. There is so much to get used to, including food services, transportation services, medical services, training schedules.”
Harnett just missed the podium in Caracas but used it as a dress rehearsal to burst into the consciousness of Canadians at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, where he captured an unexpected silver medal in the 1,000-metre time trial.
That experience, and a career that included three medals over four Olympics and two Pan Am medals, helped Harnett understand where the Pan Ams fit in an athletes’ quadrennial cycle and what competitors need as they make final preparations for the Games.
It makes him ideal to be Canada’s chef de mission for the upcoming Pan Ams, a role in which he says his “No. 1 objective is to ensure the athletes, our athletes, have everything they need to compete and win here at home. My role is to ensure the athletes shine.”
Harnett has been one of the public faces of the Games, involved from the early stages of the bidding process, and the 50-year-old says being the chef, a volunteer role, “is a continuation of putting money where my mouth was.
“I was an athlete that spoke long and free about the need for investment in high performance and sport infrastructure, particularly in this region,” says the Thunder Bay native, who makes Toronto his home.
Harnett retired from cycling after winning a bronze medal at the 1996 Olympics but still rides for fun at the velodrome in Milton and has a business organizing corporate bike events. Married to equestrian athlete and lawyer Victoria Winter, herself a double Pan Am medallist, Harnett has done television colour commentary on cycling and is very involved in charities such as Special Olympics Canada and Right to Play.
“I believe in sport,” he says. “It’s what I am. I’m excited about what this unprecedented investment in sport infrastructure is going to mean in terms of sport opportunities in our communities.”
In his role, Harnett, who was Canada’s assistant chef at the Guadalajara Pan Ams in 2011, won’t just be hanging around the Milton velodrome. He’s excited that he, and local ticket buyers, will be able to take in diverse sports such as archery, badminton, table tennis and bowling. Bowling? “I grew up as a bowler,” he says. “My grandfather owned a bowling alley in Thunder Bay and my mother managed it. On a PD day I was at the bowling alley and I bowled after I’d done my chores. I loved bowling.”
Harnett, based on his own experience, believes these Pan Ams will be significant for Canadian athletes as they prepare for the Olympics in Brazil next year.
“I like to say the road to Rio has a stop in Toronto,” he says. “I think that’s the way our athletes are viewing this. It’s an important stepping stone on the journey, and we get to witness it without the filter of television.”