Canada's Clara Hughes celebrates after competing in the women's 5,000-metre at the Olympic Oval in Richmond on Wednesday.SAEED KHAN/AFP / Getty Images
She has travelled to Olympic fame on speeding bikes and glinting blades.
Now, in retirement, Clara Hughes, 38, is opting for a different form of transport - the ocean kayak. The red-haired star of Canada's Olympic team said in an interview yesterday she will take on the challenge of open water, making up for lost time with husband Peter Guzman.
"I'm buying my first ocean kayak. There's a lot of adventure travel on the horizon," said Hughes, who carried Canada's flag into the Vancouver Olympics and earned the sixth medal of her career speed skating 5,000 metres at the Richmond Oval.
"In the Torino Olympic year [2006] while I concentrated on the Olympics, my husband kayaked the inside passage from the Washington border to Skagway, Alaska. He'd pursued ocean kayaking without me because I always told him I need my legs. I can't sit in a boat because my legs would atrophy too much. So, now I'll get to do some of the things he's come to love. He's always told me how much I'd enjoy being out there.
"Now I will learn how to paddle, how to roll and travel a whole new way. My legs can shrink, but I want to stay strong and healthy and active the rest of my life."
Hughes is a Winnipeg native, who makes her home in Glen Sutton, Que. For the past year, she lived in a Vancouver apartment, walking distance from the oval, so she could become increasingly familiar with the venue.
She was in Toronto yesterday to launch the Mitsubishi 2010 Right to Play Challenge fundraising drive. For the next three months, the car manufacturer - a major sponsor of the humanitarian Right to Play organization - will donate $100 from every vehicle sold in Canada to the charity. The goal is to raise more than $500,000 toward Right to Play's programs in 23 countries. The group, started by Norwegian speed-skating legend Johann Koss, uses sport and play to improve health, life skills and teach children in war-ravaged regions that there are such things as respect and rules and order. Mitsubishi has donated almost $1-million in two previous challenges.
Hughes had two Olympic medals in cycling events before switching to speed skating - a sport she was originally inspired to take up after watching the 1988 Olympics in Calgary. She credits the focus on sport with having brought her back from the brink of trouble as an idle teen, when she was getting into cigarettes and drugs.
Sport was an exercise in focus and discipline for Hughes. Generally, she worked out twice a day, six days a week, 11 months a year. As a cyclist, she'd grind up and down hills 23,000 kilometres a year. As a speed skater, she covered, on average, 25 kilometres a day on ice, with another training session on the bike or in the weight room.
"I won't go at the ocean kayaking as hard as I did as an athlete in Olympic training. I won't miss the anaerobic side of things, but I want to be able to give back because I've been on the receiving end of so much in sport over 20 years, so much kindness and opportunity and joy," Hughes said.
"I've talked to Johann about where I can help Right to Play. The most logical step is I feel I need to be educated on what the programs are. I know in a nutshell what Right to Play does, but now I'll do some job shadowing, learn how and why it works, so that when I go speak about it I have some background, experience and understanding - on the business side of it and managerial side, too. I'll learn the behind-the-scenes things, the people who make things happen," Hughes said.