Canadian hockey fans know Hayley Wickenheiser as one of the most iconic figures in women's hockey, but did you know that she also competed in the Summer Olympics as well?
More than a century ago, men’s ice hockey started out as an event at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium.
Four years later, the Winter Olympics broke off as a separate competition and were held in Chamonix, France. That opened the door for some of the best athletes in the world to test themselves in completely separate disciplines at both the Summer and Winter Games.
To date, 150 athletes have done just that, including 13 Canadians. But only one Canadian hockey player had pulled the double-double: Hayley Wickenheiser.
A member of the Hockey Hall of Fame, the IIHF Hall of Fame and Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame, as well as an officer of the Order of Canada, Wickenheiser is one of the two most decorated Olympic hockey players of all time, with the other being her Olympic teammate Jayna Hefford. The pair competed in five straight Games between 1998 and 2014, earning four gold medals and one silver.
Wickenheiser was 19 and Hefford was 20 when Canada fell to the United States at the first Olympics featuring women’s hockey in Nagano, Japan in 1998.
After that tough lesson, they went four-for-four in their subsequent tournaments.
In Nagano, Wickenheiser tied for third in tournament scoring with eight points in six games and was named to the tournament all-star team. Over the next four Games, she became the all-time leader in goals (18) and points (51) in Olympic women’s hockey. She also wore the ‘C’ on home soil in Vancouver in 2010.
Growing up in Shaunavon, Sask., Wickenheiser was raised in an era where even the best young athletes switched sports with the seasons.
As well as being a standout on skates, she was also an excellent baseball and softball player, and her second Olympic experience came at the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Australia.
At that time, similar to women’s hockey, softball was just starting to find its footing as an Olympic event. The sport debuted in Atlanta in 1996, with Canada finishing fifth.
Four years later, the Canadians slipped to eighth in an eight-team field despite a respectable run-differential of minus-5 over a seven-game round-robin. They did not advance to the knockout round.
Canada’s tournament began with a tough 6-0 loss to the defending gold medalists from the United States. Later, a 7-1 win over Italy was sandwiched among five one-run losses, two of which went into extra innings.
As an outfielder and utility player in Sydney, Wickenheiser finished with Canada’s highest batting average.
Men’s baseball and women’s softball were discontinued from Olympic programming after the Beijing Summer Games in 2008.
Both sports’ popularity in Japan brought them back onto the docket in Tokyo in 2020, where the Canadian women captured bronze.
No baseball or softball tournaments are being held at the current 2024 games in Paris, but they'll return again in 2028 when the Games come back stateside to Los Angeles.
Competing in both the Winter and Summer Olympics, like Wickenheiser did, is an impressive achievement on its own. One Canadian took things even further by medaling in both competitions and is the only athlete ever to win multiple medals at both the Summer and Winter Games.
Clara Hughes competed in three Summer Olympics as a cyclist, and three Winter Olympics as a speed skater. She started off with two cycling medals in Atlanta in 1996, then added a gold, silver and two bronzes in speed skating through Salt Lake City in 2002, Turin in 2006 and Vancouver in 2010.
Here's another fun fact: he was never an Olympic hockey player, but one Stanley Cup champion made a notable guest appearance at the Olympics eight years ago.
A decade after winning it all with the Carolina Hurricanes in 2006, Ray Whitney carried the bag for his Scottsdale, Ariz. neighbor and fellow Canadian Graham DeLaet as his caddy at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.