Carol Huynh

Athletic Highlights:
• 2008 Olympic Gold Medalist
(first woman to win a wrestling gold medal for Canada)
• 2007 Pan American Games Gold Medalist
• 2005 World University Games Gold Medalist
• Eight-time Canadian Senior Champion

As a high-schooler a decade ago in tiny Hazelton, B.C. where the United Church
had sponsored her Chinese parents as refugees out of Vietnam, it was her older
brother and sister who were always there encouraging her to get into sports.
She was the first of her family born in Canada and provided one of the most
memorable moments from the Beijing Games with a gold-medal performance
breaking an eight-day medal drought for a country yearning to hear its national
anthem.

In Beijing, her tears during the medal ceremony told the story of a young woman
who had completed a life-long journey that had taken her back to the country her
father had fled over 50 years earlier to win for the country that had embraced
them as refugees.