After taking up rowing in high school in 1985, Kirsten Barnes quickly made the Canadian national team and attended the 1987 Pan American Games, where she won a gold medal in the coxless pairs alongside Kathleen Heddle. Her next stop was the 1988 Summer Olympics, where she and Sarah Ann Ogilvie finished first in their B final and seventh overall. She switched to the coxless fours and placed fourth at the next two World Championships, alongside Heddle, Marnie McBean, and Brenda Taylor. At the 1991 World Championships, however, Heddle and McBean were exchanged for Jennifer Doey and Jessica Monroe and the quartet won the gold medal in the coxless fours as well as the eights, with Heddle, McBean, Megan Delehanty, Lesley Thompson-Willie, and the non-Olympian Kelly Mahon. Barnes then became a double Olympic champion by winning these events in 1992, with Kay Worthington substituting for Doey in both events (Doey dropped out prior to the event due to a back injury) and Shannon Crawford in place of Mahon in the eights. Barnes retired after the Games to complete her studies at the University of Victoria, where she was athlete of the year three times (1989-1991) prior to her 1993 graduation. She then entered the University of Bristol and earned a PhD in sports psychology in 1997. She was inducted into the British Columbia (1994), Greater Victoria (1994), and University of Victoria (2006) Sports Halls of Fame, the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame (1994), and received the University of Victoria’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 2001.
Canada