Few know Chambers, but team won’t soon forget him
Joe O’Connor, Canwest News Service
Published: Thursday, November 06, 2008
TORONTO - “Jim,” says the sports writer who covered the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta to another sports writer standing nearby, “who is the fifth guy on the relay team?”
“Carlton Chambers,” Jim replies.
Carlton who? It has been the same way for Chambers ever since 1996. He is the fifth Beatle of Canadian track and field, and a forgotten man, like the golfer who finishes second to Tiger Woods or the hockey player who hits the post instead of scoring the winning goal.
People can rhyme off Chambers’ teammates on the gold-medal-winning 4x100-metre relay team by patriotic rote: Donovan Bailey, Bruny Surin, Glenroy Gilbert and Robert Esmie. But even some of the journalists who were actually in Atlanta have a hard time remembering Chambers.
Canada’s sprint relay crew blew away the vaunted United States squad – and the world – at those Games. Last night, they were at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto for their induction into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame.
The Class of 2008 also featuring boxer Lennox Lewis, swimmer Nancy Garapick, speed skater Marc Gagnon and Detroit Red Wings legend Steve Yzerman. Pat Gillick, the former Toronto Blue Jays general manager, and figure skating’s David Dore were also among the inductees in the builders category.
Like the other members of his team, Chambers was dressed in a tuxedo. But none of the assembled reporters appeared interesting in talking to him. They all wanted Bailey, the sprint king.
Chambers’ story is not sexy. It is not about winning the big race, but about watching it from a VIP area, at the finish line in Atlanta, with a Canadian flag in his hands. Chambers was Canada’s leadoff runner in the heats and the semifinals. He did his part for the team. He hoped to do even more in the main event. So to prepare for it, he ran in the 200-metre heats and wound up injuring his hip.
“I don’t usually run the 200,” Chambers says. “That’s the only part where it was a bummer for me. I was using it to warm up and … .”
That was it. His Olympics were over. Chambers informed the coach of his injury and Esmie, and his wild Mr. Blast Off haircut, grabbed the spotlight in the starting blocks in Atlanta.
“What Carlton did was unselfish,” Gilbert says. "You are at the Olympic Games – the biggest stage you will get to in our sport – and for him to step aside and say, ‘Look, I’m injured,’ most people wouldn’t say that.
“Most people, if they were injured, they wouldn’t tell you. They would try and run through it – and that would have cost us.”
Chambers was 21 years old in 1996. He was just a kid, and passing the baton to Esmie was hard to do, but he felt there would be more Olympics in his future. There were not. A bad car accident and some bad luck prevented him from getting back to the pinnacle of his sport. And now Chambers is just another “nine-to-five guy” trying to make a living at a logistics firm in Mississauga, Ont. None of his co-workers even know he is a former Olympian.
“Sometimes, I do kind of think about it,” Chambers says of missing what could have been the biggest moment of his life. “But I know in my heart what I did, and how much work I put in, so regardless of what anybody else thinks – or forgets – it doesn’t really bother me.”
He was awarded a gold medal along with the rest of the Canadian team. The 33-year-old keeps it in the same box it came in, on top of the dresser in his bedroom.
Chambers says he looks at the medal all the time. It reminds him of all that he once did and could have done.
And while he maybe forever lumped with Pete Best, Ringo Starr’s predecessor as the Beatles’ drummer, Chambers has a medal in a box to prove he was one of the best.
Last Night’s Ottawa Area Canadian Sports Hall of Fame Inductees
Steve Yzerman
Home town: Nepean
Age: 43
Sport: Hockey, NHL superstar with Detroit Red Wings for 22 seasons, captain for the last 19.
Achievements: Won three Stanley Cups (1997, 1998, 2002), winner of Conn Smythe Trophy (1989), Lester B. Pearson Trophy (1998) and Frank J. Selke Trophy (2000), scored 692 goals, earned 1,063 assists for 1,755 career points in 1,514 NHL games, recorded five 50-goal seasons – 50 in 1987-88, 65 in 1988-89, 62 in 1989-90, 51 in 1990-91, and 58 in 1992-93.
Glenroy Gilbert
Home town: Ottawa
Age: 40
Sport: Track and field, 100- and 200-metre sprinter, and formerly the world’s fastest No. 2 runner in the men’s 4x100-metre relay
Achievements: Competed in four Summer and one Winter Olympic Games as an athlete from 1988 through 2000, and was a coach at the 2004 and 2008 Summer Games, member of the gold-medal-winning men’s 4x100-metre relay team at the 1996 Summer Olympics and the 1995 and 1997 world championships, gold medallist in the 100 metres at 1995 Pan Am Games.
David Dore
Home town: Ottawa
Age: 68
Sport: Figure skating, second vice-president, figure skating, on the International Skating Union Council
Achievements: Youngest person to serve as president of Skate Canada from 1980-84, director-general from 1985-2002, former ISU judge, attending seven world championships and one Olympics, built Skate Canada into a multimillion-dollar organization, which was the envy of other national sport organizations, one of the most influential figures in Canadian amateur sport.