Volume 10, Issue 41, Week of October 14, 2013
Saskatoonʼs REAL Community Newspaper
The
Golden Years
Diane Jones Konihowski and her husband, John Konihowski, and daughters Janna (front) and Alana (Photo Supplied)
I
Jones Konihowski reflects on track career
n the 17 years between 1967 and was the Canadian star who gave so 1984, Diane Jones Konihowski much of herself in advance of the grew from Saskatoon’s home1976 Olympics at Montreal that she town hero to Canada’s Golden Girl, ran out of gas on competition day. scaling rather remarkable heights in She was the strongest voice in North international athletics. America, speaking out against the She was twice the world’s best boycott of the 1980 Olympics in athlete in women’s Moscow by American and pentathlon, ranking No. Canadian teams. She was 1 in 1975 and 1978. She always a drug-free athlete was named three times in a day and age when to Canada’s Olympic certainly her Russian riteam. She was the 1978 vals were users and other Commonwealth Games track and field athletes gold medallist and the were looking for some Pan-American Games built-in advantages. gold medallist in both “You always come 1975 and 1979. away from your first All of which were Olympics with fond, sufficient credentials to fond memories,” said People be honoured this year Jones Konihowski. “The with an induction into event in Munich was so the Athletics Canada Hall of Fame. colourful, the stadium was beautiHaving missed the ceremonies held ful, the atmosphere was free and you in New Brunswick, Jones Konibuild friendships. I was working on howski will accept the award among the hurdles one morning and Esther many friends, including her first Roth, one of the Israelis, asked if coaches (Bob Adams and Lyle Sand- I’d like to join them for lunch. We erson) at the University Faculty Club walked back to the village and had a on Oct. 18. The presentation will be nice lunch. part of a two-day celebration of the “We woke up the next morning 30th anniversary of the Bob Adams and Joyce Sadowick, one of our Foundation. Canadians, and I decided we were Jones Konihowski’s Olympic going into Salzburg. There was a journey came with experiences that strange, quiet feeling within the could have easily been described village. We picked up some yogurt in best-selling mystery novels at the dining hall. When we stepped or adapted by screen writers for outside the village there were motion-picture projects. hundreds of media gathered. We She sat in the same section at still didn’t know that the Arabs had the Olympic Village for lunch with scaled the walls and murdered the three of the Israeli athletes who were Israelis until we heard the news on gunned down the next day by Arab the train. After that the whole spirit terrorists in 1972 at Munich. She of the Games changed. Armoured
NED POWERS
trucks and guards with machine guns were all over the place. “In reflection, I remember noticing from the beginning that security was lax. Anyone could walk right into the village.” The 1972 Games were the beginning of a pentathlon rivalry between Jones Konihowski, Russia’s Nadyezhda Tkachenko and Jane Frederick of the United States. In Munich, Jones Konihowski was ninth, Tkachenko 10th and Frederick 11th. When the Olympics came to Montreal in 1976 “the security was tough and unreal.” As the host country, Canada chose to develop Jones Konihowski “as a media darling, and virtually every second weekend I was caught up in a campaign — particularly selling the Canadian Olympic coin. I was a cover girl on Chatelaine magazine in July. Canadians believed I was going to win gold. I knew I should get a medal, but when I had to dig deep, there wasn’t much left in me.” On the scoreboard, Tkachenko was fifth, Jones Konihowski sixth and Frederick seventh. The momentum began building towards 1980. Jones Konihowski won the Commonwealth gold in 1978, a year where her scores were the best in the world. She and her husband, John, moved to New Zealand for four months of intense training. On April 23 the United States and Canada announced they were going to boycott the Moscow Olympics because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. “I was hurt by the decision,” she
said. “Because I spoke out against American President Jimmy Carter’s decision and subsequent support of the Canadian Olympic Association, my life was really hell. There were negatives written by people I thought were friends. There were obscene phone calls, death threats, the whole bit. I think Jimmy Carter was misinformed by his advisers and I wish I could have talked to him. You hate to see politics destroy the spirit of the games. Yes we’re competitive on the field, but we’re at peace with each other. (Continued on page 4)
Diane Jones Konihowski competes in Laval, Que., in the mid-1970s. (Photos by Vlad Dzavik)