³Ô¹Ï±¬ÁÏ alumni, staff at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang
While most of Canada follows the 2018 Winter Olympic Games on television, a select number of University of Toronto alumni and staff will be in South Korea in person representing Canada at the Games.
Alumnus Paul Poirier is one of 17 figure skaters on the national team competing at the Games. Poirier completed a bachelor’s degree in linguistics at ³Ô¹Ï±¬ÁÏ and skated for the Varsity Blues for one season, winning the gold medal in the men's open free skate at the 2012 OUA championship and helping ³Ô¹Ï±¬ÁÏ to a bronze-medal finish. Along with partner Piper Gilles, Poirier will represent Canada in the ice dance. This will be the second Olympic berth for the Unionville, Ont., native after he represented Canada in 2010 at the Vancouver Games.
Former Varsity Blues rugby player Heather Moyse earned her master’s degree in occupational therapy from ³Ô¹Ï±¬ÁÏ in 2007. She will be representing Canada in bobsleigh. Moyse won her second straight Olympic bobsleigh gold medal at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, after winning bobsleigh gold at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver and making history with pilot Kaillie Humphries, as the first Canadian women to win Olympic bobsleigh gold.
Kaillie Humphries and Heather Moyse celebrate their gold medal on the podium during the medal ceremony for the women's bobsleigh in Sochi (photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)
³Ô¹Ï±¬ÁÏ’s David L. MacIntosh Sport Medicine Clinic will have two staff members at the Games supporting the Canadian team: Marcel Charland and Lee Schofield.
Read ³Ô¹Ï±¬ÁÏ's Bruce Kidd on why the Olympics still matter
³Ô¹Ï±¬ÁÏ's Beth Ali on how universities support their high-performance athletes