CBC Archives

You must sign in to leave a comment on this clip.

Barcelona 1992: Montreal's golden girl

Broadcast Date: Aug. 6, 1992

The name Sylvie Fréchette is on the lips of people across her hometown today. They can't believe that Olympic officials are refusing to give the synchronized swimmer a gold medal. A judge's keyboard error bumped her score down to second place at the Barcelona Games. "When I saw her there on the podium, I thought she should have been standing there for gold for Canada," and not silver, one woman exclaims in this CBC Radio clip.

Barcelona 1992: Montreal's golden girl

• Brazilian judge Ana Maria Da Silveira mistakenly typed 8.7 instead of 9.7 into the scoring pad after Fréchette performed her synchronized swimming figures. The judge quickly realized her mistake but Olympic officials said that, despite protests by Canadian officials, the score must stand. Despite it all, Fréchette's other scores were so high that she still ended up in second place. International Olympic Committee vice-president Dick Pound began lobbying for a reversal of the decision.

• Sylvie Fréchette was born in Montreal in 1967. She started synchronized swimming at age eight in Laval, Que. At the 1990 Commonwealth Games, Fréchette became the first in her sport to receive perfect 10s from all judges in a solo event. A year later, she became solo world champion, a title she held going into the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Despite the trauma of her fiancé killing himself just before the Games, she gave the performance of her life.

• Sixteen months after graciously accepting the silver medal, Fréchette exchanged it for gold on Dec. 15, 1993, in front of a cheering crowd at the Forum in Montreal. The IOC and a member federation reversed their position and recognized the judging error. The medal was presented to a crying Fréchette by IOC vice-president Pound. Kristen Babb-Sprague, the American who had been awarded gold in Barcelona, was allowed to keep her medal.

• Fréchette retired from competition after helping Canada win a silver medal in team synchronized swimming at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

• Barcelona marked the first summer Olympics where CTV — not the CBC — won the broadcast rights for Canada. CTV's winning bid was $16.5 million US, more than four times what the CBC paid for the 1988 summer Games in Seoul. CTV president Murray Chercover hailed the winning bid as "a historic day for CTV." Newspaper reports at the time said CTV executives were shocked that their bid won.

• In 1998, the CBC, in partnership with sports specialty channel TSN and its French counterpart RDS, paid $160 million US for broadcast rights to five Olympics. The deal covered the summer Games of Sydney in 2000, Athens in 2004 and Beijing in 2008 and the winter Games of Salt Lake City in 2002 and Turin, Italy, in 2006.

• On Feb. 7, 2005, the IOC awarded Canadian broadcast rights for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games and the 2012 Summer Games to CTV Inc. and Rogers Communications. CTV and Rogers outbid the CBC with a winning offer of $153 million US for the two Games. American rights had already been granted to NBC for a record $2.2 billion US.

Barcelona 1992: Montreal's golden girl

Medium: Radio

Program: The World At Six

Broadcast Date: Aug. 6, 1992

Guest(s): Laurin Jaubin

Reporter: Jean Laroche

Duration: 2:17

Last updated:
May 26, 2004