The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

“I feel honoured, but there’s a lot of good athletes who live in Stoufiville like Natalie Geiger who has won a lot of Canadian junior track titles and has set sev- eral Canadian junior age group records and guys like Keith Acton “Making this team is definitely the highlight to my hockey career and it’s a stepping stone towards my goal in trying to make the senior national team." She's the first Stoufiville resi- dent to make a national women’s hockey team. Knox was named to the 22- member under-22 national squad thisweek The team played athree- game exhibition series against the USA in Pierrefonds, Que. From there, playing for the underâ€" 18 provincial team and, fol- lowing that, the under-22 national team can enhance your chances. While Knox’s journey was sideâ€" tracked in 2007 when she was cut, it’s ofiicially back on track. The 20-year-old Stoufiville resident and Wllfi'id Laurier Uni- versity Golden Hawks netminder put down that the trail begins by excelling with your club team. BY MIKE HAYAKAWA Staff Writer At her first Canadian under-22 women’s hockey tryout camp last year, Liz Knoxwasaskedtowrite about her potential path to the senior women’s national team. naflonal hockey team Stoufi‘ville 0 Sun -'li'1bune First Stoufi‘iiille product to make women’s squad No stopping goalie from “It’s so unreal. It really is,” she Sec NATIONAL. page 4 IO! 'flI Previous to that, it was 40 years ago in Mexico City When Jim Elder, Tom Gayford and Jim Day sur- Not surprisingly, then, it was smiles all around Monday from the last Canadian team to score a medal in Olympic competition as Eric Lamaze, Ian Millar, lill Hensel- wood and Mac Cone celebrated a silver medal in show jumping fol- lowing a come-from-behind perâ€" formance in Hong Kong. BY JOHN CUDMORE Staff Writer Canada's Equestrian Olympics medal drought is over. Tom Gayford, at Gaylands Farm on Bloomington Road Thursday, won Olympic gold with the Canadian equestrian team at the 1968 Games in Mexico City. He remains involved in the sport and applauded medal wins by Canadian riders in Hong Kong at the 2008 Games this week. Memories of Mexico in Olympic medals STOUFFVILLE'S GAYFORD EXPECTS SPINDFFS FROM 2008 GAMES’ GOLD. SILVER “We are all happy for them. Ian (Millar) and I are very close friends. Everybody roots for each other. We all work for the sport in Canada." “I expected they had a good shot," said Gayford, then a Gormley resident, who remains active in the sport and owns Gayiands Farm, on Bloomington Road in Whitchurch- Stouffville. “They have a good team and things were going well on Day 1 and they carried it over. prised the world’s show jumping elite much to the delight of Cana- dians. As. if the team event win was WHITCHURCH-STOUFFVILLE PUBLIC LIBRARY In Mexico City, the Canadians were longshots to win a medal. Gayford recalled. not enough, Eric Lamaze added an exclamation point with his vic- tory in the individual show jump- ing competition Thursday night when he won a jump-OE against Sweden's Rolf-Goran Bengtsson to win Canada's first individual eques- trian medal since 1976 and first gold since Gayford and pals took gold in Mexico City. Certainly, the sport has changed since the 1968 Games, but the Euroâ€" peans remain powerful. “No, we just competed," said Gayford, who coached the (lanaâ€" dian entry in the 1972 Games, designed the Montreal Olympics jumping course and remained involved with the equestrian team Unlike the modern day equestri- ans, Gayford, Elder, a former Aurora resident now living in Schomberg, and Day did not gallop back-andâ€" forth between North America and Europe for training and competiâ€" lion. Instead, domestic shows served as their training ground. MWOntafiopennant forStouffvilesoflbalsquad See TOUGH. pagr 7. STAFF PHOTO/BiLL ROBERTS