Catherine Priestner Allinger — A Woman of Firsts

JANUARY 2009 FEATURE

Sport has been such a dominant part of your life. Where did it all begin?

It began when my family moved from Hamilton, Ont., to Winnipeg. The family living in the house behind us had two daughters. They were the same age as me and my sister, and we became really good friends. Both those girls were involved in the River Heights Speed Skating Club and suggested that I try skating. I did and ended up winning nationals for my age class that first year. It was 1968, and I was 11 years old. I had never really skated before; it just came easily to me. I was a natural for the sport and was also generally athletic and very involved in school sports. Obviously, that helped.

I was 13 when I made our national team and competed in the world sprint championships in Milwaukee, 14 when I won a gold and a silver medal at the Canada Games, and 15 when I made my first Olympic team (in 1972). My path was really quick and on a fast track, but I didn’t make it because I was good; it was because Canada wasn’t very strong at all in the sport at that time. We just didn’t have the depth, but I was skating fairly well relative to other Canadians.

What personal characteristics contributed to your athletic success?

Cathy in action.

Physically, I was a natural athlete and probably had the right body type for the sport. Early on, I decided that I wanted to skate long track and met Ron Marchuck, an awesome coach. We connected and I stuck with him. He was fantastic; he seemed to know what I needed and gave me huge emotional support. He was a teacher and a huge mentor. I am sure he is the reason I did as well as I did. Unfortunately, he was killed in a car accident when I was 16, so he wasn’t around when I won the 500m silver medal at the 1976 Olympic Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria. My win was the first official medal by a Canadian woman in the sport, and Ron was absolutely huge in getting me to that point.

His death was devastating. I was heartbroken and really never had another coach that I worked with on a continuous basis after he died. Part of that was the national team coaching system itself. Canada frequently changed its national team coaches. I was on the national team, but didn’t have a dedicated coach. We went to Europe every year to train, so we were quite independent. We also didn’t have a lot of funding.

After the 1972 Games in Sapporo, I went to Norway with three other athletes to train with a coach, Finn Halvorsen, who, interestingly, is now Canada’s long track program director.

So you didn’t have the support that is taken for granted nowadays.

That’s right. But I got help from a lot of different people. If I was training somewhere, I would tap into what was available. I worked with Soviet athletes and other coaches. I looked for expertise in different areas.

As a teenager, it can’t have been easy to figure out the right people to go to.

I’ve always been independent. Part of it is the family I grew up with, but I was in Europe on my own when I was 15. I was with a team, but not a very structured one, so I had to grow up in order to survive. One of the things I learned from sport is that coaches are huge and so is the support around you, but you have to deliver on your own. I learned that early on.

Were you always driven to excel?

I definitely have the drive to be the best I can be at whatever I do and I think I had that from a young age. I wouldn’t say that I set my sights on the Olympic Games or on winning a medal after winning my first race, but I realized that I was getting good results very quickly, and that was enjoyable. Progressing from provincial to national to international competition depends on the results you get, and I happened to have very positive results very early.

Was it difficult for your family to let a teenaged girl head off on her own?

I don’t think it was easy, but I’m not sure they really understood what I was doing. My parents hadn’t travelled a lot, but we were a very sport-minded family. Doing well in sport was natural; my two brothers also did sport at a fairly high level. But I’m not sure my family understood what was involved in getting on a plane and flying to Amsterdam, switching planes to go to Munich, and taking a train to Inzell alone for the first time. Fortunately, I was competent enough to be able to do it, although it did have its scary moments.

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le Journal en français

January 2009
Vol. 9, No.1
Front Page
CONTENTS

Catherine Priestner Allinger — A Woman of Firsts

by Sheila Robertson

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