Valérie Hould-Marchand joined the Canadian national team in 1993 and won her first major international medal, gold in the team event, at the 1995 Junior World Championships. By the end of the year she had qualified for the 1996 Summer Olympics where, as the youngest member of the team consisting of Lisa Alexander, Karen Clark, Karen Fonteyne, Cari Read, Sylvie Fréchette, Janice Bremner, Kasia Kulesza , Christine Larsen, and Erin Woodley, she won a silver medal. She left her next two major international tournaments with gold, winning the solo event at the 1998 Commonwealth Games and the team event at the 1999 Pan American Games. She soon became embroiled in a dispute with the national synchronized swimming organization, Synchro Canada, over her choice of solo routine, which was determined to be too “avant-garde” to impress the judges. Despite the high hopes for her at the 2000 Summer Olympics, Hould-Marchard refused to change her routine and was promptly dropped from the national squad. She retired from active competition soon after and took up a number of different roles, including coaching, television production, and sports journalism. She is a member of the Rivière-du-Loup Sports Hall of Fame.
Canada