HEATHER MOYSE, BOBSLEIGH
WOMEN’S HEAT 1: FEB. 18, 19:15 EST
Five months before the Torino Olympics, Heather Moyse was recruited to join Canada’s bobsleigh team. It had never occurred to Moyse that pushing a 450-pound sled down an icy slope and then jumping on the back of that whizzing rocket for a three-minute ride at Autobahn-level speeds would bring her straight to the Olympic podium. In Torino, the P.E.I.-native narrowly missed snatching the bronze by five one-hundredths of a second.
This near-victory prompted the Moyse to ask herself, “Huh, coming fourth, do I really want that to be my story?”
The loss that brought Moyse painfully close to the podium in 2006 only redoubled her desire to win. “Coming back to Vancouver things changed,” explains Moyse, who won the gold for Canada on home soil in 2010. Not only did Moyse win, but she and her pilot. Kaillie Humphries, beat the second place team (also Canadian) by a whole second-something that is nearly unheard of in bobsleigh.
Before she joined the national bobsleigh team as a brakeman, the 35-year-old had a decorated career in both rugby and track and field. Moyse competed in track (as a sprinter), rugby and soccer at the varsity level while completing her kinesiology bachelor at Waterloo.
After graduating in 2000, Moyse was approached by a bobsleigh coach who hoped to recruit the multi-talented athlete. Having never had any previous interest in decking herself in head-to-toe Lycra, Moyse turned the offer down. It wasn’t that the varsity all-star wasn’t intrigued by the offer. “I declined because I had already committed to an internship in Trinidad,” explains Moyse.
After three years of working in Trinidad and Tobago, Moyse returned to Canada and began applying to post-graduate programs. She moved in with her sister in the Annex and got a job serving at Hemingway’s. To this day the Yorkville mainstay remains the gold medallist’s ersatz pied-à-terre — her go-to destination for a snack and a little repose from her hectic life. (Should you want to eat like an Olympian, Moyse recommends the chicken wrap, which she orders almost every time she visits Hemingway’s.)
“P.E.I. will always be home-home, but Toronto is home,” says Moyse, who currently lives near Bathurst and St. Clair.
When she moved to Toronto in 2004, it had been years since Moyse had laced up her rugby cleats, but her sister was keen to get her young sis back on the pitch. Although the siblings are extremely close, the two had only played rugby together once before. Moyse couldn’t turn down the invitation for some sports-based sororal bonding.
“I didn’t know if I wanted to put my body through that again,” explains the now-decorated Olympian. “But it was so fun,” trills Moyse about playing with her sister for the Scottish, a local rugby club that holds regular practices at Leaside’s Sunnybrook Park.
After her first summer in Toronto, Moyse liked living in the city so much that she decided to accept U of T’s offer of admission. While completing her master’s in occupational therapy, Moyse played rugby for the Varsity Blues and was also recruited to join the Canadian national rugby team. While completing her master’s, Moyse was recruited, for a second time, to join the Olympic bobsleigh team (she had to put her studies on hold for a year while training for the Torino Olympics). Apart from a week-long trip to Vegas with Humphries, Moyse went right back to work after winning Olympic gold. The summer following Vancouver, Moyse yet again donned the red and white, representing Canada on the rugby pitch. During a rugby game the athlete shattered her ankle. But, rather than taking the injury as a sign to take time away from sports, Moyse decided to start track cycling. (Biking didn’t aggravate her injury.)
A mere year after hopping on a bike, Moyse represented Canada at the Pan Am road and track championships in Argentina. Since adding cycling to her athletic resumé, the small-town girl has now represented Canada on the international stage in three different sports, making her a triple athletic threat.
Moyse’s sprinting abilities paired with her rugby rucking skills make her an ideal bobsleigh candidate. She’s fast, strategic, strong and tough. Tracks that other sledders find punishing barely scathe Moyse, who has suffered three major injuries. While discussing her injuries, Moyse does some quick mental math, “Oh my gosh, every two years I get injured.” In 2008 Moyse destroyed her shoulder (rugby), in 2010 it was her ankle (also rugby), and then in late 2012, she went for hip surgery. Rather than weakening Moyse, these injuries seem to encourage the Olympian.
While being treated for her torn labrum, it was discovered that Moyse’s hip sockets faced the wrong way. “Ask anybody with me growing up — I was never a pretty sprinter, ever. I had legs flailing out the sides like propellers on a helicopter or like the Road Runner,” recalls Moyse. Hip surgery in late 2012 fixed the problem, and since coming back to bobsleigh training, Moyse’s times have improved. The gold medallist is faster and stronger than she’s ever been.
“Everything I had accomplished before the surgery was in spite of having this bone-on-bone blockage in the front,” explains Moyse, who’s been breaking her own records post-surgery.
With Canada’s top female sledder breaking her own gold-winning records, we can’t wait to see what the blond powerhouse brings to Sochi.
