Stouffville to honour Cockburn for Olympic medal

When Karen Cockburn returns to Stouffville next week from Beijing, China, her husband, Mathieu Turgeon, has a pleasant gift awaiting her.

Having recently graduated from the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College, the 29-year-old Markham native intends to give his wife a full body massage, he said so on national TV this week.

It's a treatment Cockburn, 27, fully deserves after she bounced, flipped and somersaulted her way to a silver medal in Monday's women's trampoline competition at the 2008 Summer Olympics.

A member of Richmond Hill's Skyriders Trampoline Place, Cockburn finished just .80 points behind He Wenna of China for the coveted gold medal.

Mayor Wayne Emmerson sent a congratulatory message to Cockburn, who will be honoured at a municipal ceremony.

Cockburn won silver at the 2004 Summer Games in Athens and bronze in the 2000 Games in Sydney when the sport made its medal debut.

"I will definitely be at her disposal to give her a full body massage," Turgeon said Tuesday. "We will definitely do some celebrating when she gets back."

If Turgeon had his way, he would have been in the stands to offer his wife moral support. But since the couple recently purchased a home in Stouffville, he stayed home and watched her performance on high-definition TV and via the Internet at a neighbour's house.

Even though he wasn't there, Turgeon, an Olympic bronze medallist himself in trampoline at the 2000 Games, acknowledged he was nervous.

"I was on the edge of my seat," he said. "Karen did an amazing routine. From there it was up to the judges.

But she earned it.

"She's worked so hard and overcame a lot of adversity after undergoing knee surgery and to train hard and to be on top of her game and to win an Olympic medal I'm so thrilled and proud of her."

Turgeon was confident his wife could vie for a medal again.

"There's so many competitors who have won medals and have been to world championships. But what it boils down to is if you are on that day," Turgeon said.

"It's about controlling your nerves. There's definitely a lot of pressure. The advantage Karen has is that she's strong mentally. She did a lot of training and she was prepared. It all played in her favour."

After the medal win, the couple played telephone tag during the day before hooking up.
It didn't help that Turgeon was busy himself that day doing trampoline demonstrations at the Canadian National Exhibition.

However, when CBC conducted a TV interview with Cockburn, they managed to connect her with Turgeon later that evening at their Stouffville residence.

"I didn't have a cell phone with me during the day and no one could reach me. But the CBC contacted my parents' home (in Unionville) and they gave them my home number. When they made the connection with me, she was definitely surprised to hear me," Turgeon said.

The injury weighed on Cockburn, too.

"The last year's been really tough," she said. "Back in October, I didn't even think I'd make the Games. It was, `How am I gonna qualify for this?' So, to come through that, then come through the surgery after the championships, make it back on more of a time constraint than I wanted, to come out with this, I'm really happy. I'm proud of what I did this year and how I pulled through that."

For 17 years she has been with her coach, Dave Ross of Richmond Hill.

"It's so hard to believe," she said. "I just started this sport for fun. It wasn't even an Olympic sport. Then it got into the Olympics. I went to three Games. I have a third medal.

"I do this sport for fun and this is just a bonus and it's amazing and I'm just trying to soak it in."

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- with files from Torstar News Service and Jim Mason