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VELMA SPRINGSTEAD AWARD
for Outstanding Female Athlete
Caroline Brunet - Sprint Canoeing
Nominated by the Canadian Canoe Association
Going into the 2000 Olympic Games heavily favoured to win a gold medal posed no problem for Caroline Brunet of Lac-Beauport, Qué. This was exactly where all her years of training had positioned Canada's paddling hero to be. Ignoring Olympic disappointment and chronic pain from her ravaged body-- Brunet was far from satisfied with her 500m silver medal in 1996--the two-time Velma Springstead Award winner and four-time Olympian was unbeatable throughout 2000. Leading up to the Games, she posted four World Cup victories. Olympic gold seemed inevitable.
Confident, experienced, single-minded, and with a driving desire to dominate her sport as no other female athlete has ever done, Canada's flag bearer had not lost a K-1 500m race in more than two years and had been world champion since 1997. Over the previous three years, she won eight of nine possible K-1 medals for an astonishing career total of nine gold, four silver, and three bronze world championships medals.
Weather is always a factor in an outdoor sport, and Sydney's Penrith Lakes course was dogged by unpredictable and violent winds. So churned were its waters on Brunet's race day that officials postponed the 500m for five unsettling hours. Brunet found it "very challenging emotionally to refocus again and again." When the race was finally run, she uncharacteristically faded and was edged by archrival Josefa Idem of Italy. For the woman obsessed with gold, the silver medal was a huge disappointment. Canadians, though, have a different view. Brunet's career remains one of the greatest in Canadian sporting history, confirmed by her gritty performance at Penrith.
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