Swimmer Nancy Garapick was cheated out of two gold medals at 1976 Olympics

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Nancy Garapick, an unknown schoolgirl from Halifax, swam into the document books and gained two Olympic medals earlier than intentionally returning to anonymity.

Ms. Garapick set a world document within the 200-metre backstroke a yr earlier than claiming a pair of bronze medals on the Montreal Olympics in 1976. Decades would cross earlier than the world would be taught what many suspected on the time – the 2 East German swimmers who completed forward of her had cheated, depriving her of a gold medal.

A world document holder at age 13 and an Olympic medalist at 14, she ready for an additional likelihood at Olympic gold solely to have Canada boycott the 1980 Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.

Ms. Garapick, who has died at 64, accomplished her college training earlier than embarking on a educating profession in British Columbia and the Yukon, about as removed from the highlight as she might discover. After the announcement of her loss of life by Swimming Canada, some former pupils acknowledged on social media that they had no thought “Miss Garapick” had as soon as been a celebrated athlete.

Sportswriters and broadcasters voted her Canada’s feminine athlete of the yr in 1975, making “the mermaid of Halifax,” as one newspaper described her, the youngest recipient of the award.

Standing simply 5-foot-3, with a slim, boyish construct, she was a technically good swimmer whose stroke so exemplified perfection that different coaches used it as a information for their very own athletes.

Coach Nigel Kemp of the Halifax Trojan Aquatic Club guided her towards greatness, acknowledging her interior want for perfection.

“She was determined,” he stated not too long ago. “She wasn’t frightened of circumstances. She took it all in stride. She was quietly confident.”

While she gained numerous medals and meets, she was denied gold on the Olympics and world championships by muscular East German swimmers who have been themselves victims of a coercive program of doping. When Ms. Garapick stood between a pair of them on the pool deck on the world championships in 1975, the sportswriter Jim Taylor memorably described the slight, 113-pound Canadian as trying like “a dinghy between two destroyers.”

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Nancy Ellen Garapick was born on Sept. 24, 1961, in Halifax. She was the second of three youngsters born to the previous Ruth Constance Darrach and Nicholas (Nick) Garapick, a Royal Canadian Navy officer who grew to become an insurance coverage salesman. Her maternal grandfather, Claude Kenneth Darrach, had been a crew member on the unique Bluenose in its racing years earlier than being made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for his wartime service in Halifax Harbour.

Her mom took her to the YMCA to discover ways to swim at age 6, although Nancy floundered so badly within the pool that she was given classes with infants in a smaller, shallower heat pool. Desperate to be together with her friends, she shortly discovered to swim.

At age 11, she competed for Team Nova Scotia on the 1973 Canada Summer Games in New Westminster, B.C. By age 12, she had set a dozen nationwide age-group data. Some of her requirements would final for many years.

At Queen Elizabeth High, directors allowed for her to overlook two months of classroom work every winter for coaching and competitors, and she or he relied on “good friends who take notes for me” to maintain up together with her research.

The Brant Aquatic Centre (now the Wayne Gretzky Sports Centre) in Brantford, Ont., was the positioning for her debut on the world stage. At the Eastern Canadian championships on April 27, 1975, she narrowly missed the world document within the 200-metre backstroke in a day qualification swim, which attracted a big, excited crowd of 1,500 spectators for the ultimate. The crowd had stood and cheered her each stroke, because the Grade 8 scholar put greater than 10 metres between herself and the pack by the halfway level.

Ms. Garapick didn’t disappoint, finishing the race in 2 minutes, 16.33 seconds, shaving greater than a second off the world document set the earlier summer time on the European championships by Ulrike Richter of East Germany.

Just 40 days later, East Germany’s Birgit Treiber shaved 23-hundredths of a second off Ms. Garapick’s time.

The trio of world document holders met in a showdown on the world aquatic championships in July at Cali, Colombia. Ms. Garapick swam the quickest 200m backstroke of her profession, finishing the 4 lengths of the pool in 2:16.09 solely to narrowly lose to Ms. Treiber.

After the race, Toronto Star sports activities editor Jim Proudfoot witnessed a scene between the swimmer and the coach. “You did a heck of a job, Sunshine,” Mr. Kemp advised her. She then leaned into him and cried.

Two days earlier, Ms. Garapick had completed third behind her two muscular East German rivals within the 100-metre backstroke.

In the ballot carried out by the Canadian Press incomes her feminine athlete of the yr honours, Ms. Garapick obtained 42 first-place votes, 10 seconds and eight thirds for 154 factors. She grew to become the youngest particular person to win the award, because the Vancouver swimmer Elaine Tanner had been a yr older, at 15, when she gained it in 1966. Ms. Garapick was solely the second Maritimer to seize the honour because it was inaugurated in 1933. Halifax sprinter Aileen Meagher was the 1935 winner.

The swimmer was adopted within the voting by determine skater Lynn Nightingale (92 factors), pentathlete Diane Jones (later Jones-Konihowski) (89 factors), runner Joyce Yakubowich and trapshooter Susan Nattrass.

At the Olympics in Montreal the next summer time, Ms. Garapick completed third in each the 100m and 200m backstrokes behind double gold medalist Ms. Richter and double silver medalist Ms. Treiber.

Ms. Garapick was the one Canadian to win two particular person medals on the Montreal Olympics.

East Germany’s girls swimmers gained 11 gold medals in 13 occasions, a stunning consequence contemplating that they had barely made a ripple 4 years earlier on the Munich Games. A collection of trials in Germany following reunification and the dissolution of the previous Communist satellite tv for pc revealed a state-sponsored routine of performance-enhancing medication was chargeable for the swimmers’ velocity and power.

“If those medals were falsely won,” the Globe editorialized in 1998, following yet one more doping scandal, “they should be taken away and the record books amended. … Anything less turns Olympic ideals into fool’s gold.”

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If the East Germans’ outcomes had been expunged at any time by the International Olympic Committee, Ms. Garapick would have gained two gold medals, changing into the primary Canadian athlete to take an Olympic gold on Canadian soil. As effectively, Canada would have swept the rostrum within the 100m backstroke with Wendy Cook (now Cook-Hogg) and Cheryl Gibson taking silver and bronze respectively after ending fourth and fifth in 1976.

After the Olympics, Ms. Garapick struggled within the pool, as some coaching associates had left the game. Only after she deserted backstroke as a speciality and labored on all strokes did she regain the consolation and pleasure she as soon as knew within the pool. Newspaper protection described her as being on the comeback path at age 17 after which, once more, at age 19, and probably “over the hill” at age 21.

At the 1979 Pan American Games in San Jose, Puerto Rico, Ms. Garapick picked up two silver and three bronze medals, an announcement after a poor efficiency on the Commonwealth Games in Edmonton the earlier yr.

“The challenge of improving my times is stimulating,” she advised Pat Connolly for the inaugural version of Atlantic Insight journal in 1979, “and so’s competing against the world’s best. And it’s still fun.”

She broke an ankle whereas snowboarding in 1978 and an arm whereas roller-skating two years later. In between, she made a uncommon tv look on singer John Allan Cameron’s eponymous summer time selection tv present.

Ms. Garapick was named to Canada’s honorary Olympic swim group in 1980, which certified her to compete in a number of worldwide meets in lieu of the Moscow Games.

“It’s sad for those athletes who were not on the 1976 team,” she advised The Globe in 1980. “We were lucky to make that team. The Olympics are never going to be the same again because of the boycott. The level of athletics will be so low because so many countries are not taking part that for those finishing first, it will not mean winning a real gold medal.”

An athletic scholarship had her swimming for the University of Southern California, although she quickly moved to Edmonton earlier than settling once more in Nova Scotia, the place she remained lively as a competitor in college meets. She earned an arts diploma from Dalhousie University and an training diploma from Mount Saint Vincent University.

While coaching for the 1984 Olympics, Ms. Garapick was struck by a automotive whereas biking in Halifax. She wanted a two-hour operation to restore injury to her proper facet, together with a fractured elbow, torn ligaments and a bone chip. Her recuperation lasted three years.

After educating in Halifax and Vancouver, she moved to Whitehorse to show at F.H. Collins highschool, together with directing a program that inspired teenaged dropouts to return to finish their training. She additionally lived in Kitimat, an remoted city on the distant British Columbia coast identified for its aluminum smelter.

In her swimming profession, Ms. Garapick accrued 17 Canadian titles and an astounding 38 championship medals, based on Swimming Canada. She has been inducted into the Nova Scotia Sports Hall of Fame (1986), the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame (1993) and Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame (2008).

Ms. Garapick died at house within the Vancouver suburb of Langley on April 6. She leaves her mother and father; sister, Janet Papirmeister; and brother, Peter Garapick. She by no means married. A non-public particular person, she left directions for there to be no paid loss of life discover.

Though denied gold on the Olympics and world championships, she discovered the classroom a extra equitable place than the pool, incomes a Governor-General’s gold medal for educational excellence in 1996.

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