Canadian Heather McDermid began her career in sports as a track and field athlete, specializing in the 800 metres and earning an athletic scholarship at Rice University in the United States. She was bestowed All-American honors in 1989 and 1990, but soon an ankle injury put an end to this phase of her life. Not to be deterred, McDermid took up rowing and, by 1994, she had made the Canadian national team. Her first major international tournament was the 1996 Summer Olympics, where she won a silver medal in the eights alongside Tosha Tsang, Maria Maunder, Alison Korn, Emma Robinson, Anna Van der Kamp, Jessica Monroe, Theresa Luke, and Lesley Thompson-Willie. She next appeared at the 1999 World Championships where, with Korn, Luke, Robinson, Thompson-Willie, Buffy Alexander-Williams, Laryssa Biesenthal, Dorota Urbaniak, and the non-Olympian Kubet Weston, she won a bronze medal in the eights. With Heather Davis substituting for Weston, this crew won bronze behind the Romanians and the Dutch at the 2000 Summer Olympics. McDermid retired after the Games and was inducted into the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame in 2009.
Canada