Voting
The CP first voted on a female athlete of the year in 1933, one year after it inaugurated a poll that became the Lionel Conacher Award for the nation's top male athlete. The poll is separate from the previously existing Velma Springstead Trophy, which also names a female athlete of the year and was first presented by the Women's Amateur Athletic Federation of Canada in 1932.
Ada Mackenzie was selected the first winner on a straight vote of each writer's top choice. By 1935, the poll was conducted using a points system where voters ranked their top three choices. Each writer's top pick received three points, their second two, and their third one. A tie occurred in 1971 as pentathlete Debbie Van Kiekebelt and high jumper Debbie Brill finished with an identical 208 points. Van Kiekebelt had more first place votes, 55 to 38, however the two women were named co-winners of the award. Barbara Ann Scott was the first woman to unanimously win the award, doing so in 1947. Scott nearly duplicated the feat the following year, however the lone dissenting vote was given to a mare, Victory Gift.
No winner was selected for the year 1950, as the CP instead chose Bobbie Rosenfeld as Canada's female athlete of the half-century. Skier Nancy Greene was voted Canada's female athlete of the century in 1999. Greene was herself a two-time winner of the annual poll, and was also an Olympic gold medalist, six-time Canadian champion and twice won the Alpine World Cup. Voters selected their first disabled athlete as the winner in 2008, naming wheelchair racer Chantal Petitclerc the recipient of the Bobbie Rosenfeld Award after she won five gold medals and set three world records at the 2008 Summer Paralympics in Beijing. Swimmers have won the most awards at 12, followed by golfers and skiers (including biathlete Myriam Bédard) with 11 each, and figure skaters with 10 victories.
Read more about this topic: Bobbie Rosenfeld Award
Famous quotes containing the word voting:
“Common sense should tell us that reading is the ultimate weapon—destroying ignorance, poverty and despair before they can destroy us. A nation that doesn’t read much doesn’t know much. And a nation that doesn’t know much is more likely to make poor choices in the home, the marketplace, the jury box and the voting booth...The challenge, therefore, is to convince future generations of children that carrying a book is more rewarding than carrying guns.”
—Jim Trelease (20th century)
“All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.”
—Tom Stoppard (b. 1937)