Joyce Yakubowich was one of Canada’s top sprinters in the 1970s, competing at two Olympics and winning acclaim at the Pan American Games in 1975 by winning three medals on the track at University Olympic Stadium in Mexico City.Canadian Olympic Committee
Joyce Yakubowich was a 16-year-old student when three friends asked her to join them on the high school relay team. Four months later, she was a surprise, last-minute addition to the Canadian track team at the 1970 Commonwealth Games, where she won a relay bronze medal after replacing an injured runner.
It was a remarkable feat considering she had never worn a pair of track shoes until earlier in the year.
Her early success was no fluke. Ms. Yakubowich, who has died at 70, became one of Canada’s top sprinters in the 1970s, competing at two Olympics.
She won national acclaim at the Pan American Games in 1975 by winning three medals on the track at University Olympic Stadium in Mexico City.
In the 400-metre race, Ms. Yakubowich (pronounced YAK-ah-bow-itch) won the gold medal with a Pan Am Games record time of 51.62 to finish ahead of American runner Debra Sapenter and Lorna Forde of Barbados.
With the gold medal on a sash around her neck, she wiped a tear from her face while standing on the podium listening to the national anthem, an image captured by a photographer and reproduced in newspapers across Canada.
Her preferred technique was to start a race fast because she felt she lacked the stamina needed for a strong finishing kick.
A few days later, in the 4-by-400 relay, Ms. Yakubowich took the baton on the anchor leg with her team in second place. To her surprise, she caught up and passed Cathy Weston of the United States to claim the gold medal for Canada and teammates Margaret MacGowan, Joanna McTaggert and Rachelle Campbell.
“I just saw the tape and decided it was no time to fool around,” she said after the race.
On the same day, she also won a bronze medal in the 4-by-100 relay with Marjorie Bailey, Patty Loverock and Ms. McTaggert. The Americans won the gold, the Cubans a silver.
Ms. Yakubowich runs at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. She won a gold medal in the 4-by-400 relay and a bronze medal in the 4-by-100 relay.Canadian Olympic Committee
She won the relay medals on a day when lung congestion had her enduring coughing fits as a cold swept through the Canadian team. She did not take medication of any kind until after her final race for fear of disqualification.
Ms. Yakubowich also finished sixth in the finals of the 200-metre race.
Her three Pan Am Games medals led her to being named British Columbia’s athlete of the year in 1975 ahead of judoka Brad Farrow and golfer Jim Nelford. She finished fourth in voting for the Bobbie Rosenfeld Award as Canada’s top woman athlete behind winner Nancy Garapick, a 13-year-old swimmer who set a world record in the 200-metre backstroke.
The performance made the runner a contender for a track medal at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. In the end, she failed to make the finals in her specialty, as she was eliminated after running a desperately slow 55.1 seconds in a qualifying heat.
What no one knew at the time was that she was suffering from a blood disorder following a heavy spring of overseas competition.
Joyce Louise Sadowick was born in Toronto on May 29, 1953, to Lena and Theodore George (Ted) Sadowick. She had a peripatetic childhood as her father explored various economic opportunities, including a stint as owner of a mink ranch in Newfoundland.
As a teenager, she attended Burnaby Central Secondary in the municipality east of Vancouver. The invitation to join a trio of classmates on a relay team changed her life.
In May, 1970, at Swangard Stadium in Burnaby, the Grade 11 student set an interscholastic regional record for the 200 metres and tied the standard of 11.1 seconds in the 100 in her first track meet. She also won the 400-metre race.
The following month, she knocked an astounding 2.1 seconds off the provincial scholastic mark in the 400 with a time of 55 seconds flat. In an earlier heat at Centennial Stadium in Victoria, she ended the race with a bloodied sock from punctured blisters.
“It’s going to hurt, but I don’t care,” she said. “I’m running anyway.”
A slight, wispy athlete who wore glasses, she “looks like she’d be more at home with a slim volume of verse than the brutal competition” on the track, Stephen Hume wrote in the Victoria Daily Times.
A week later, in a meet in Hamilton, Ont., she was named an alternate for the Canadian team for the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh. A runner from Vancouver was a late drop out because she was unable to spend 28 days in Scotland, a condition of the economy airfares purchased for the competition.
When medal hopeful Irene Piotrowski pulled a muscle leaving the starting blocks in a heat of the 100-metre dash, Ms. Yakubowich was pressed into service on the Canadian relay team with Ms. Loverock, Joan Hendry, and Stephanie Berto, a great scholastic sprinter from Vancouver who had competed at the Olympics two years earlier at age 15. The Canadians placed third behind the gold-winning Australians and an English quartet.
Away from the track, Ms. Yakubowich studied biology, kinesiology and education at the University of Victoria and Simon Fraser University in Burnaby. She raised two children and worked in a variety of office administration roles after retiring from competition in 1979.
Ms. Yakubowich died unexpectedly of a suspected stroke or heart attack at home in Rutland, B.C., on March 24. She leaves Brad Yakubowich, her husband of 50 years. She also leaves a son, a daughter, two grandchildren, and her mother.
In 1987, she was inducted into the Simon Fraser Athletic Hall of Fame, a remarkable achievement considering the university did not even have a varsity women’s track team when she attended.
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