Steve Warne
Writer & Broadcaster, Co-Host
Team 1200 Sports Radio
TOTALFIT CELEBRITY
SILVER
TURNS TO GOLD
25 Years Later, Olympic Silver Medalist
Elizabeth Manley Still Inspires Us
I
n 1988, fi gure skater Elizabeth Man-
ley dazzled Canadians with her silver
medal performance at the Calgary
Olympics. It's one of the great, enduring
moments in Canadian Olympic history.
Now 47, Manley is back on the ice and
back in the gym for the fi rst time in six
years.
"I've actually been off skating and train-
ing for almost 6 years now," Manley
said. "I was living and coaching down
in the U.S. when I had the hardship of
losing both my parents to illness. I came
back to Canada to care for them. Since
I've been back, I've been doing so
much charity work it just came to a point
where I thought, `How can I make a big-
ger impact?"
So, just weeks before the 25th anniver-
sary of her Olympic silver medal win,
Manley hosted and produced the ice
show "Elizabeth Manley and Friends",
a fi gure skating exhibition in Ottawa.
Manley realized she needed to refocus
some of her energy toward herself. To
pull this off, she had to get back into
skating shape so she enlisted the help of
Ottawa trainer Tony Greco (she trains
at the Beech St. location). She credits
Greco's circuit training for helping to
turn her fi tness levels around.
"It was frustrating at fi rst because, you
know, I'm an Olympian and I'll always
be an Olympian. But I keep forgetting
I'm in my 40's now. I guess I still want
to be that girl in her 20's. So I went into
the gym full tilt and it was very diffi cult at
fi rst. Now I'm getting there."
"I feel so good at the end of each work-
out. I've been on the ice for a few weeks
now and the training has made a mas-
sive difference in my skating. I'm at that
point where I can really see the change
in my body and I'm really excited. I feel
like I'm getting back to where I was."
Manley has also had her nutritional
challenges, then and now. "When I was
skating and things weren't going well,
I'd turn to greasy food," she says. "I was
addicted. I'd sit in my pyjamas all day
and just eat." Now she faces a different
issue. While training, she quickly fi gured
out she wasn't eating enough.
"There have been a few mornings
when I'm about to start my workout
and my trainer asks me what I've eaten
today and I say, `Um, nothing', Man-
ley laughs." "But now I've gotten into
that routine. Every couple of hours I've
got to get some food in me. The right
foods, of course. I've got to keep the
energy level up. My workouts are so
much better when I have proper nutri-
tion and protein. I have so much more
energy now." Proceeds from her charity
event will go towards teen mental health
issues, something Manley went through
herself. She's now a sought after public
speaker at schools, talking freely about
her experience with depression.
"I was a teen that went through it,"
she says. "In fact, I'm a poster child
for mental health as a teen. I was very
young, representing my country, being
pulled here and there and I kind of lost
Liz. Athletes are supposed to be tough,
you know? Shut up and don't complain.
So I didn't tell anyone how I was feel-
ing. I just became very closed up. I was
at the lowest of lows. I quit skating, I
gained weight, and I lost all my hair. I
had a nervous breakdown and was clini-
cally depressed. I gave up my Olympic
dream."
"Then I reached out for therapy and
worked with a psychologist. Once I did
that, I started to realize I did have a lot
of people around me who were there for
me. Four years later, I was standing on
the podium in Calgary. Now when I talk
to kids, I bring my medal and hold it up
and they go crazy. But my message to
them is that it's not an Olympic medal
to me. It's a medal in life. I won gold in
life that night in Calgary. I came back to
life."
Photo by V
alerie Keeler
60
Vol. 2, Edition #3
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