Pat Turner joined the Canadian national rowing team in the late 1970s and made his first appearance for the country at the 1979 Junior World Championships, where he finished sixth in the coxless fours event. Two years later he competed at the senior edition and won a bronze medal in the coxless fours with Jim Relle, Tim Turner, and the non-Olympian Rob Gibson. By 1983 the quartet was part of a coxed eights crew and finished eighth at the World Championships alongside Stephen Beatty, Dean Crawford, Grant Main, Brian McMahon, and Kevin Neufeld. Exchanging Beatty, Gibson, Relle, and Tim Turner for Mark Evans, Mike Evans, Blair Horn, and Paul Steele, the crew took gold in the event at the 1984 Summer Olympics, finishing just over 0.4 seconds ahead of the Americans.
Main, Neufeld, Steele, and Pat Turner had one more triumph together at the top of the podium in 1986, when they won the coxless fours event at the 1986 Commonwealth Games. They barely missed a medal at that year’s World Championships, placing fourth, before they rejoined an eights crew with McMahon, Andy Crosby, Dave Ross, Don Telfer, and John Wallace. After a fifth-place showing at the 1987 World Championships, Turner retired from active competition. A graduate of the University of British Columbia, he has been inducted, along with the rest of his gold medal-winning crew, into the British Columbia Sports (1985) and Canadian Olympic (2003) Halls of Fame.
Canada