Biography

Three-time Olympian Jillian Richardson-Briscoe first represented Canada on the international stage at the 1982 Pan American Junior Athletics Championships in Venezuela at the age of 16, where she won gold in the 400 metres, silver in the 4×400 metre relay, and bronze in the 200 metres. She will never forget the day a premier Canadian female athlete told her she wouldn’t amount to anything if she didn’t go on something. “I was just 16 at the time and this was coming from someone in the sport who I looked up to and really respected,” said the 400-metre national record holder who has been inducted into Athletics Canada Hall of Fame. “That really motivated me to show her that she was wrong. If I had to do six 200 sprints in training, I pushed my body to do one more just for her. That’s just how much I was driven after the suggestion that I couldn’t succeed without the use of performance-enhancing drugs.”

FROM SOCCER TO TRACK

Migrating from Trinidad & Tobago with her older sister to join their mother in Calgary in 1971, Richardson-Briscoe played soccer before John Cannon, who has developed several Canadian Olympians, turned her on to track. “I had just competed at a minor track meet where I was successful when this large man appeared and asked if I had ever thought of becoming a track athlete,” she said. “I remember looking him straight in the face and telling him I am a soccer player. He told me to consider what he had said and he gave me his name and phone number.”

The next time Richardson-Briscoe saw Cannon, she was ready to take up his offer. “I would have done anything to get out of the house back then, so when John told me that track could take me to all of these wonderful places around Canada and the rest of the world, I told him to sign me up right away,” she said. Little did Cannon know that he would play a pivotal role in helping Richardson-Briscoe fulfill a dream. “I had always wanted to be the best at something,” she pointed out. “When I was a five-year-old, I remember looking up to the stars and saying, ‘I want to be famous’.

ENDURANCE

The 400-metre is considered the most difficult track event. Speed endurance and anaerobic capacity and power are required for the long sprint race that many world-class athletes steer clear of. “I didn’t want to do it because everyone said it was so hard,” said Richardson-Briscoe who studied psychology at the University of Calgary. “But John convinced me to do it once I realised my long legs didn’t turn over quite that fast for the 100-metre dash which I favoured. Once I committed, I trained and worked so hard that there were days when I couldn’t climb my stairs when I got home. I hurt so much that the furthest I got was the couch where my mother gave me supper and I slept on many times.”

GOLD IN AUSTRALIA

Richardson-Briscoe’s first appearance as a senior came at the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Australia, where she helped Charmaine Crooks, Molly Killingbeck, and Angella Taylor-Issajenko win gold in the 4x400m relay in 3:27.70. A year later, the quartet, with the assistance of Marita Payne Wiggins, placed fourth at the 1983 World Championships, but won silver at that year’s Pan American Games. Richardson-Briscoe was also a member of the Pan Am Games 4×100-metre team that clinched bronze in Caracas.

At the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, with Dana Wright in place of Taylor in the 4x400m relay, Richardson-Briscoe and her teammates won silver. Their time of 3:21.21 still stands as the national record. Crooks, Killingbeck, Payne, Wiggins, and Richardson-Briscoe then defended their Commonwealth crown in 1986, won silver at the 1987 Pan American Games, and finished fourth at that year’s World Championships, where Richardson-Briscoe was also sixth in the 400m. She made it to the semifinals of the event at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul where she ran sub 50 in the semifinals and still didn’t make the final, all 4 girls who beat her in that semi were in the top four spots in the final. She, however, equalled the 49.91 secs. 400-metre national record set by Payne at the Los Angeles Games. She missed an opportunity to medal in the 4×400 m relay, as Killingbeck dropped the baton on the second leg of the final after being bumped, leaving the Canadians unable to complete the race.

HOPES FOR BARCELONA 92

Richardson-Briscoe took bronze in the 400m at the 1989 World Indoor Championships where she set the Canadian indoor 400m record; 50.62. She then took a hiatus from athletics to have her first child, Sterling, in June 1991. She was able to return in time for the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona where she felt she was ready to win an individual medal. “I was just 17 and happy to be at the Los Angeles Olympics,” she gushes. “I remember sitting next to Carl Lewis in the cafeteria and it was like, ‘Wow, I’m really here!’ At the Seoul Games, the goal was to reach the semi-final, which I did. In Barcelona the goal was to medal, I knew I had the opportunity to medal.”

That was not to be as she finished fifth in the 400-metre race and her 4×400-metre team was fourth.

She was fifth in the 400m, running 3 amazing races, including back-to-back sub 51 to make it to the final. In the final she faced Perec (France), who ran 48 seconds earlier in the season, Bryzgina, Nazarova (USSR), Restrepo (Colombia), Stevens (USA), Sandie Richards (Jamaica), Smith (GBR). She placed 5th with a time of 49.93. “It was a photo finish,” she recalled. “That last 100m was like 4000m in slow motion.” A mere .3s separated 3rd, 4th, 5th; 400m. She was 5th. “I know when I lost it” she expressed, “when I came around the last bend. I was winning the race! I couldn’t believe it, I knew the Russians and Perec were faster than me over the 200m, and I started questioning myself, lost focus and started tying up.” She placed 4th in the 4×400 m relay alongside Crooks, Karen Clarke, Rosey Edeh, and Camille. 

THE HARDEST RACE

“The hardest race on the track; 400m, consisting of aerobic and anaerobic strength. Every time I finished a 400m I felt like dying. The pain I felt in every part of my body was real; I would stagger to some quiet corner lay down and hopefully a reporter wouldn’t come to ask me about the race. I would force myself to slow down my breathing, as my instinct would be to hyperventilate – to get as much oxygen in my body as possible. The burning in my chest felt like a heart attack coming on. My legs couldn’t/wouldn’t sustain my weight. I would go through that agony every time I ran a 400m. From the age of 13-27, I ran at least six 400m/year. All you can do at this point is try and remember the lessons taught to you by your coach on maintaining your form. It’s not about winning at this point, your sole focus is to stop this agony by getting to the finish line. I finally learned how to run the 400m by mostly (error) and I was walking away from my races, running sub 51 in back-to-back races enroute to the final in Barcelona. I was running effortless and most importantly, efficient I had finally cracked the code!

SUDDEN END

Her career had a sudden end the following year when she was critically injured in a car accident in May 1993. She and her ex-husband, William Briscoe who was the driver, were in a vehicle that went out of control on an off ramp in Calgary, tumbled down an embankment and landed on its roof. She was ejected. The winner of 18 national titles in a 10-year span up to 1992, Richardson-Briscoe had just returned from a training stint in Italy with Stefano Tilli who once coached Merlene Ottey who he was engaged to.

“I was on the verge of moving to Italy,” she said. “I was on top of the world and felt invincible…I made some money and me and my husband were going to buy a car when the accident occurred. I took my seatbelt off to grab some mail in the backseat when I noticed that the car was very close to the side of the road. As I was turning around, the wheel hit the curve and that was the last thing I remembered.”

PROVING THE DOCTORS WRONG

She suffered a severed spinal cord, broken ribs, a damaged spleen and several lacerations.

Comatose for three months, Richardson-Briscoe spent several weeks in a wheelchair and walked with the aid of a cane for a few months. By the time she regained some strength and was able to walk without aid, the three-time Canadian champion was desperate to prove that she was still a world-class athlete.

“I wanted to show doctors and others who said my track career was done that I could make it all the way back to the top,” she said. “I knew it was going to take very hard work, but I was prepared to do whatever it took.”

SHOCKING REMARKS

The press showed up in large numbers when Richardson-Briscoe resumed training in Calgary and Cannon — who didn’t visit her in hospital or at home while she was recuperating — was at the track one day while she was being interviewed.

“The next thing I know is that there is a quote from John about me that said, “She looks like a broke down engine whose timing is off’,” she said.

Coming from someone who Richardson-Briscoe regarded as a father figure made those remarks even more searing and painful. After recovering from the shock and disappointment, she made Cannon her new inspiration.

WHAT’S NEXT?

The accident, however, had taken its toll. “Before the mishap, I did ten 200-metres in 28 secs. with a one-minute recovery,” she said. “I thought I could still do that. When I ran 38 secs. full out, I knew that was it. Now, I am not an athlete anymore and I was asking myself the question, ‘What’s next?’ Track was my life and I didn’t know anything else.”

For the next 14 years, Richardson-Briscoe wanted nothing to do with track and field.

“When I was in Alberta, I avoided passing by the track that I trained on,” the 58-year-old mother of three sons said. “If the television was on and track and field came on, I would turn it off. That’s how much I hated the sport that gave me so much.”

MOVING ON

After a year in Vancouver where her ex-husband was transferred, Richardson-Briscoe and her family moved to the Greater Toronto Area in 2004.

A few years ago, one of her son’s hockey coaches, who is also a teacher, asked if she could come out to his school to assist with their track and field program.

“I thought that the time had come for me to stop feeling sorry about myself,” the 1997 Alberta Sports Hall of Fame & Museum inductee said. “If there is one thing I know, it is track & field. So I took up the offer, went to the school and there was this packed gym with kids running around. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw this little Black boy who was running with one finger in the air, which is exactly how I ran. He looked like me.

“I approached him and asked if he had ever thought of running track which was the same question my coach asked me years ago. When the boy told me he was a soccer player, I said it’s OK and I gave him my name and phone number and told him we can talk if he wished.”

HIGH POINT

When asked what her highpoint was, Richardson-Briscoe pointed to the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. “By that time, I knew how to run and I felt I was poised to medal,” she said. “I was at the peak of my career and very confident.”

LOWEST POINT

Being sent home from the 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland was the lowest point in her athletic career.

She was expelled for ‘breaching the team code of conduct’ by refusing to stay in the Canadian accommodation in the Athletes Village.

Richardson-Briscoe, who owns a wellness spa and coaches twice weekly at York University, still feels she was unfairly punished.

“I arrived late apart from the Canadian team in New Zealand for the Commonwealth Games after running some Grand Prix meets in Europe. There were no more single rooms available and I opted to stay with the Nigerian team as they had 4 athletes in total in their squad. When the Canadian chef de mission saw that I was staying with another team, they swiftly held a meeting declaring I had abandoned the team and sent me back home to Canada in less than 24 hours of arriving in New Zealand. I think it all had to do with the crackdown of the elite sprinters and their independence from the mediocre rest of the Canadian team after Ben Johnson was disqualified from the Seoul Games for steroid usage, “I was made a scapegoat.”

INCREDIBLY HONOURED

Richardson-Briscoe is incredibly honoured to be in Athletics Canada Hall of Fame, particularly in the same class with Olympic relay champion Glenroy Gilbert who is Canada’s track and field head coach.

“He’s a ‘Trini’ like I am and someone who has a lot of integrity,” she said. 

In addition to the national 400-metre outdoor record she shares with Payne, Richardson-Briscoe set national indoor records in the 300-metre (37.17 secs.) in Germany in 1988 and the 400-metre (51.59 secs.) at the Aviva Grand Prix meet in Birmingham four years later that still stand.

“I just know my hard work and work ethics are what has sustained me to overcome and rise above the obstacles I’ve faced,” she said.