Six-time Olympic medallist Clara Hughes told an audience in Thompson March 16 that she thought winning her first Olympic medal – a bronze medal in cycling at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta – would quiet the feelings she had carried inside her since childhood, the idea that if she was the best at everything it would cure her family’s dysfunction.
But it didn’t.
Hughes was speaking at a public event in R.D. Parker Collegiate’s Letkemann Theatre as part of the eighth-annual Hope Forum, an event put on by the Hope North Suicide Prevention Committee in Thompson to promote life and encourage frank, open discussion about mental illness and mental health.
Tied with Cindy Klassen as Canada’s most-decorated Olympic athlete, with medals in multiple summer and winter games in cycling and long-track speed skating, Hughes might seem like the ultimate example of a person who’s got it all together. But the fact is, she earned those medals despite, and in some ways because of, her own mental health struggles and those of her family.
“You can learn to manage, you can learn to cope and you can thrive with it,” she said of mental illness. “Four of those Olympic medals of the six that I won came after my first bout of depression, came within other relapses into depression.”
A Winnipegger, Hughes told the crowd, which rewarded her with a standing ovation at the conclusion of her speech, that she remembers when she hid in a closet in her Elmwood home as a child, anticipating that her alcoholic father would come home and the family would come looking for her and they’d have a night as a nice, normal family. She fell asleep waiting for him to get back and when she awoke, the sounds she heard were not those of a happy family but of arguing parents.
“I sat in that closet that night and for the first time felt a sense of hopelessness and worthlessness and failure and I was five and I know I’m not the only person in this room that has felt that,” said Hughes.
Her sister, who has bipolar disorder and depression, sought solace in the streets and was sent to juvenile detention at the age of 13, spending the rest of her teens in custody and group homes, away from her family.
Hughes was travelling down that same path, smoking a pack of cigarettes a day by seventh grade and numbing her pain with alcohol and drugs until she saw something at the age of 16 that changed her life. It was 1988 and Canadian speed skater Gaetan Boucher was competing in his final Olympic race and she watched as he burst out of the gate only to fade in the final 300 metres, his energy expended too early to wind up on the podium. She got into speed skating herself, then switched to cycling when Manitoba threw together a team, which went on to finish first when the Western Canada Games were held in her hometown.
But despite her meteoric rise, which saw her win the first and last medals for Canada at the 1996 Olympics, Hughes says she was really still punishing herself for not fixing her family, just with exercise and training this time instead of with drugs and alcohol. Following her first Olympic medals, she became clinically depressed, though she didn’t recognize the symptoms in herself even when others did. She self-medicated with alcohol and drugs and food and lost two years in her athletic prime.
“I refused to admit I had a medical condition that needed treatment and help,” said Hughes. “I refused to admit that I was not stronger than this. I refused to give my family the chance to support me through this.”
She quit sports entirely before returning to cycling with a new coach, competing in the 2000 Olympics in Australia and finishing 25 minutes behind the winner in her first race and not feeling bad about it.
“I remember thinking, ‘I don’t care if it’s not a medal. I feel really good about finishing what I’ve started today and knowing who I am,’” said Hughes.
Hughes decided to return to her first sport, speed skating, when she was the same age Boucher had been when she saw him give one last valiant effort despite being considered washed-up. She qualified for the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City and said she was incredibly nervous until she received an email from a family she had met and visited in Lac La Ronge First Nation in Saskatchewan, which contained a Cree word meaning “now” which she wrote on her hand before her first race.
“I realized, this is it, this is now, see what’s possible,” said Hughes.
She won a bronze medal, becoming the fourth person and second woman to win medals in both the summer and winter games. She would go on to win a gold and silver medal at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy and was chosen as the flag bearer for Canada at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics opening ceremonies. Her final Olympic speed skating race in Vancouver, in which she won a bronze medal, was one of the best races of her career, she says.
“There was still eight skaters to go and I celebrated like I won the Olympics even if I looked like a complete jerk if I ended up in ninth place because I wanted people to connect to the moment and the beauty of being complete, being completed, not depending on something outside and knowing who you are and celebrating excellence,” she said.
Her mom was in the audience that day for the first time at any of Hughes’s Olympic races.
“I looked up and I waved and I blew her a kiss,” said Hughes and then she went to call her dad, who lived with undiagnosed bipolar disorder and has since died after suffering from dementia. He hung up the phone.
“But you know what?” said Hughes. “For the first time in my life I was able to look at that phone and I was able to smile and I was able to say, ‘Dad, I love you. I love you and I can’t fix you and I can’t rescue you and I can’t even change you but I can love you. I can love you with all my heart and today was a good day. Today was a great day and I’m going to celebrate it.’ And the only reason I was able to do that, not be destroyed by success, is because of all the help I had in the previous 14 years. Without that help, there would be no speed skating. Without that help, there would be no comeback. Without that help, there would be no life and no person.”
Though Hughes said she is proud of her athletic achievements, she says what she has done outside of competition, including working with the Right to Play organization – to which she donated $10,000 after the 2006 Winter Olympics – and becoming a national spokesperson for the Bell Let’s Talk campaign to encourage open discussion of mental health and illness, has been even more meaningful.
“We connect, I think, at the deepest level through struggle yet all we share is joy,” she said. “If we could learn to talk about it more, people wouldn’t feel alone.”
