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Shirley Pommier has spent the past 40 years mastering the art of sports.

Over 20 years in Sudbury and the next 20 in British Columbia, the accomplished multisport athlete has enjoyed success in Nordic skiing and running, while competing in orienteering and staying active. many other ways.

In a way, it’s kind of a story of the right place, the right time.

When Pommier, her then-husband and their two children moved from Elliot Lake to Nickel City in 1979, the concept of master sports was still in its infancy. For those new to the notion, you might want to think about old school hockey and the like – but that would only partially correct you.

In fact, groups like Masters Swimming Ontario accept members as young as 18 years old, while Athletics Canada uses a 30 age limit. For sports like curling and the like, athletes must actually be aging in relation to their age. senior level before being generally welcomed at the top of the rankings, from a chronological point of view, at 60 years old.

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Take part in events like the Canada 55+ Games and the very rookie Canadian Masters Championships in Guelph, designed alongside the Huntsman Senior World Games in Utah which now draw competitors topping the 10,000 mark, and you can see the reason confusion.

The arrival of Pommier in Sudbury marked a very different time.

“I’ve always been an aspiring athlete,” she said recently. “In high school, I did gymnastics and was a cheerleader. I guess deep down there had always been a competitive soul living in me.

Married to an intern who eventually became an emergency physician, Pommier moved from Montreal to Ottawa and from Vancouver to Elliot Lake. While she certainly wasn’t looking to hit the slopes, Pommier had developed an affinity with downhill skiing during her travels, an interest that morphed into the cross-country version of the sport when she visited in northern Ontario.

In his thirties at the time and with his two cubs enjoying greater independence, Pommier “took to the air”, athletically speaking – and in his own words – starting to take his bearings in South Sudbury.

“When I came from Elliot Lake, Terry McKinty was the Northland Athletic Club’s tour de force,” she said. “I was one of his runners. But I wanted to go to a Nordic ski race and needed a club, so this dear man created the Northland Nordic Ski Club for me.

Despite being a late beginner in the competitive sport scene, the woman clearly had talent.

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Enrolled part-time in a fitness and lifestyle management diploma program at Laurentian University, Pommier joined the varsity ski team.

“Ken Sidney did a fitness test on me and I had really good results – I had trained pretty hard,” she recalls.

Unfortunately, university participation requires full-time status, which Pommier could not juggle given the family situation.

“So I became like an assistant coach, muffin maker,” she laughs. “Ken and I have become very good friends; a lot of those skiers are still my friends.

She eventually taught cross-country skiing and orienteering at LU.

But it was as an athlete that she was really making inroads, especially as part of the five-year age bracket that was designed for people past their prime. Although the International Masters Games Association was not founded until 1995, the World Masters Games was already operational.

In 1985, Pommier attended his first event of its kind in Toronto. According to her own quick count, she now has about seven.

“The masters movement has changed a lot of our lives, in my opinion,” she said.

It was certainly the case on a personal level.

“I worked hard and Terry was a good coach so I found myself athletic. I had modest success and it was fun so I got involved in organizing events a bit. I also steered, but not as successfully – I used to outrun my brain all the time, ”she says with a smile.

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Yet it is on the cross-country ski trails that Pommier excels the most.

“I went to Sweden for the World Ski Masters, in part to have more competition,” she suggested. “Unfortunately my age group was just ahead of the curb. They were just starting to attract more women behind me – now it’s huge. But being at the start line in Sweden was pretty amazing.

“I had never been to Europe before.”

There is an interesting contrast in the world of passionate mastery athletes, where the eternal flame of competition flies in the blink of an eye to the realities of the aging process on the body. Preparing to celebrate her 75th birthday this summer, Shirley Pommier can understand better than anyone.

“The medals were fun, obviously, but never the most important thing,” she said. “All with Masters Games is such a great time. Personally, I have always looked at the clock, I have always wanted to be faster. But I went back to work in my 50s and suddenly realized how hard it was to train and work.

“Twelve-hour shifts just aren’t conducive to very hard physical training, so I used muscle memory to try and drag it out as long as possible,” added Pommier, who originally graduated from science. nurses in Montreal and nurse for seven to eight years before returning to the field almost three decades later.

“I still like a starting line, but it’s more difficult.”

Like so many avid athletes of his age, Pommier has had two knee replacements. Out of necessity, she was forced to lower her own expectations of herself.

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“I think the edge came off a bit, just because it had to.”

Then, she remembers the pleasure she recently enjoyed participating in the Reino Keski-Salmi Loppet, in memory of a dear friend and former college skier of Les Voyageurs.

“They had a special group for the 70 years,” she explained. “I think it always got my competitive juices flowing when I won that category, beating a handful of recreational 70-year-old women who were skiing and had no idea what I was trying to do.

Yes, Shirley Pommier hasn’t mastered the Masters sporting environment – at least not quite yet.

Randy Pascal is that sports guy from Sudbury. His columns appear regularly in the Sudbury Star. Contact him at [email protected]