It's amazing
how far you can go on a rented windsurfer. In
the case of Winnipegger Murray McCaig it took him all
around the world. In the summer of 1983, McCaig's
family rented a cabin at Victoria Beach and rented
a windsurfer. The teenager took to it immediately,
especially when he realized it was something that he
could do better than his father Duncan. “I saw
my opportunity,” recalled McCaig, whose fate was not
one of those who would just let his kids beat him at
anything athletic. “He had to go back to work
(during the week) and I could practice all week and
get better than him.” Eventually, the McCaigs
bought a used windsurfer. Largely self-taught and self-coached,
McCaig learned through his own research and honed his
racing skills against local competition at a time when
Manitoba had a large windsurfing fleet. Soon
he was sailing in national regattas
“It was a lot of trial and error. You would go to
a race and watch what the other racers were doing.” His
first big international experience came in 1987. After
finishing second at the Canadian Youth Championships
in Kingston, ON, McCaig was allowed to compete at the
World Championships, also being held in Kingston, He
was hoping for a top-25 finish but ended up being second-last. He
would have the last laugh as in the years to come he
would often finish ahead of that year's World Champion
from France .
From there, the medals started to come, highlighted
by the gold as the 1990 Western Canada Summer Games
in Gimli and the bronze at the 1991 Pan American Games
in Havana, Cuba, as well as numerous top-five performances
in World Cup events. In 1992, McCaig qualified
for the Olympic Games in Barcelona , Spain . He
arrived in Spain ranked second in the world, full of
confidence that he would win and Olympic medal. But
it was no to be. One day before his competition
was to start, he was cycling through the Olympic Village
when he was struck by a police car and broke his leg. In
a flash, his Olympic experience was over before it
had begun.
After he recovered from the broken leg, McCaig committed
himself to qualifying for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta
. But despite Winnipeg a gold medal at the 1994
Goodwill Games in Russia and another bronze at the
1995 Pan Am Games in Argentina , he missed out on qualifying
by finishing second at Olympic Trials. He retired
from the sport shortly after. “All of the lessons
I learned as an athlete, I was able to apply to the
rest of my life,” says McCaig, who earned an MBA from
the University of Western Ontario before founding and
becoming CEO of a wireless internet company and green
technologies firm in Toronto where he lives with this
wife Stephanie and two young children.
By Glen Dawkins, Winnipeg Sun.
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