Clara Hughes
Practice: Key to learning a new language
By Marie Labrecque
Clara Hughes is something of an expert in duality—in both sports and languages. She is the only Canadian athlete to have won medals in both the Summer and Winter Olympics: two in cycling, in 1996, and three in speed skating, in 2002 and 2006. And this 5000-metre race Olympic champion trains just as hard at using her second language.
Hughes started learning French when she moved to the village of Glen Sutton, Quebec, in 2000. The Winnipeg native fell in love with the Eastern Townships, with its ancient mountains and tiny villages. “Because of my training, I’ve lived all over the place, but when I spent a summer in Quebec at the age of 27, it was the first time that I felt that I could spend my life in a particular location. I felt at home here and discovered a different way of life. I also have family roots in this province: my mother was born in Montréal, and that’s where she met my father, who is from Britain. So when I arrived in Quebec, I felt a sense of belonging.”
When she arrived in Glen Sutton, this young woman only knew about 20 words of French. “I believe it’s very important to speak French if I want to live in Quebec, if I want to communicate with my friends and neighbours. I have done a lot of travelling outside the world of sport, and I’ve noticed that if you only speak one language, you are limited. My French has come in handy often. It’s like a gift when you’re travelling around the world.”
Perfecting this “difficult” language is not easy for Hughes, especially since she has to spend several months a year in Calgary to train on the Olympic Oval, and in Vancouver, where she is preparing for the 2010 Olympics, which will be the last for the 37-year-old athlete. She enrolled in a French course at the University of Calgary. It is not easy to devote time to French homework because she has to travel so much, but she takes her learning very seriously. “Every day, I do the exercises in my French book for 20 or 30 minutes before I go to bed. I also listen to French tapes and watch Radio-Canada. This year, I have a Quebec team mate, Justine L’Heureux, and I can practise my French with her. I try to speak French whenever I have the opportunity. As in sports, practice results in improvement.”
