Nancy Garapick

Nancy Garapick was one of Canada’s greatest swimmers and among the country’s most accomplished Olympians. At just 14 years old, she won bronze medals in both the 100m and 200m backstroke at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal (setting an Olympic record in the heats of the 100m backstroke), becoming one of the youngest athletes ever to stand on an Olympic podium for Canada. She was later selected to compete at the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow but missed due the US-led boycott.

Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Garapick was a swimming prodigy from an early age. By age 12, she had already set 12 national age-group records, some of which stood for more than 40 years, and was the youngest participant at the 1973 Canada Summer Games. At age 13, she became one of the youngest swimmers ever to set a world record when she swam 2:16.33 in the 200m backstroke at the 1975 Eastern Canadian Swimming Championships in Brantford, Ontario, breaking the existing mark by more than a second. Although the record stood for less than two months before being broken by East Germany’s Birgit Treiber, it remains one of the most remarkable achievements of Garapick’s career.

Although best known for her backstroke, Garapick was also highly accomplished in butterfly, freestyle, and individual medley events. She represented Canada internationally beyond the Olympic Games, including at the World Championships in Cali, Colombia, and won bronze in the 4x100m freestyle relay at the 1978 World Championships in Berlin alongside Gail Amundrud, Wendy Quirk, and Susan Sloan. At the 1979 Pan American Games, she won five medals: silver in the 200m individual medley and 4x100m freestyle relay, and bronze in the 100m butterfly, 200m butterfly, and 400m individual medley.

Throughout her remarkable career, Garapick won 17 Canadian national titles and 38 championship medals. Recognized as her home province of Nova Scotia’s greatest swimmer, she was named Canada’s youngest-ever Female Athlete of the Year at age 14 in 1975.

After her international swimming career, Garapick swam for the University of California in 1981. She later graduated from Dalhousie University (1982) with a Bachelor of Arts and from Mount Saint Vincent University (1983) with a Bachelor of Education and became a teacher in the Yukon.

Garapick was inducted into the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame (1986), the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame (1993), and Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame (2008).