July 25, 1996
Silver has nice ring to it
By STEVE SIMMONS
Toronto Sun
ATLANTA -- A few days ago, after the opening ceremony, Marianne Limpert presented her father with her ring from the 1996 Atlanta Games.
In an emotional exchange between Olympians - one hopeful, and one actual - she thought she was giving him her best memento from the Summer Games.
She had no idea of what was to come last night. And she wasn't alone.
Marianne Limpert of Fredericton, a little-known swimmer, presented Canada with its first silver medal of the 26th Olympiad.
Swimming out of the shadow of Joanne Malar and into the national spotlight, Limpert set a Canadian record in the morning heats and bettered it when it mattered most.
It was a startling leap on to the big stage, when all eyes were on everyone but her.
Swimming faster than she ever has before - twice on the same day - Limpert came within a hand touch of the top spot on the podium, losing out to Michelle Smith of Ireland, who grabbed her third gold of these Games last night.
Limpert's time in the 200-metre individual medley was 2:14.35, almost a second faster than she had been in breaking her four-year-old Canadian record in the morning heats when she qualified fastest for the final.
It was the kind of morning swim that sent her back to the Athletes' Village excited about what was to come. The silver medal, the fame and the excitement have been so long in coming for a swimmer who has competed internationally for the past six years, without earning so much as a ripple of attention.
"I didn't let the pressure get to me," she said afterwards. "I had fun. I didn't let the lane placement get to me."
She started the race in Lane 4, normally reserved for the favorite. And one thing Marianne Limpert isn't used to being is the favorite.
She rarely has been a Canadian favorite.
The second-place finish will give her a national place, something she never before has known, even though she played second fiddle to the notorious Michelle Smith, and second fiddle in Canada previously to Malar.
"It'll be fun," Limpert, 23, said of her newfound stardom "It'll be neat to be known."
Joanne Malar's face is on the Special K cereal boxes. You'd have to look up Marianne Limpert in a Swimming Canada yearbook to know what she actually looks like. She does no commercials. She has little sponsorship.
It was the arrival of Malar that almost led to Limpert's retirement and eventually inspired her to the kind of performance she demonstrated last night.
She almost disappeared from the national team, saw her times heading in the wrong direction and decided it was time to give it up.
"I had an ongoing case of PMS," she said jokingly. But what she really had was a case of being upstaged by Malar, the new kid on the block, the kid who was getting all the attention.
"I was going to quit," said Limpert, who finished sixth in Barcelona. "Joanne came up and beat me and went right by me. So I was at a standstill in my career. She came up at just the right time. I have to admit that was a bit of a crossroads for me. This was the wakeup call for me. So it was either quit or get off your butt and get going."
Marianne Limpert, citizen of Canada, got going, which is really nothing new for her. She has been going most of her life. She was born in Quebec, grew up in New Brunswick, and, since becoming a national team swimmer, has trained at the University of Toronto, University of Calgary and Laurentian University in Sudbury. Next year, she has enrolled at McGill in Montreal.
"She's a girl who can't stay still," said national team coach Dave Johnson. "But as you can see tonight, that's not necessarily a bad thing."
It wasn't necessarily a bad thing either for her father, Heinz, and her mother, Marianne, who were in the stands last night. Heinz was once the amateur heavyweight boxing champion of Canada. Only a citizenship squabble - he still had German papers - prevented him from representing Canada at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. Now he has his Olympic ring and his daughter has her Olympic medal.
And what of her mother?
"I told her, `If I go to Sydney, you get the next one.' "
