With the world’s largest sports festival being held in London, and being telecast to billions of viewers worldwide, the Canadian Olympic broadcast consortium has engaged some prominent McMaster alumni to serve its television audience as expert commentators.

In London to commentate on the action are McMaster Olympic veterans Joanne Malar, who is covering the swimming competition; Mark Heese, who is on-site for the beach volleyball; and Barrie Shepley, who will share his expertise on triathlon.

A 2002 McMaster graduate, Joanne Malar is one of Canada’s most decorated swimmers and a three-time Olympian (1992 Barcelona, 1996 Atlanta, 2000 Sydney).   Making five Olympic finals over her career, Malar also captured gold medals at both the Pan American and Commonwealth Games.  She is the most decorated swimmer in Pan Am Game’s history. As a McMaster competitor Malar dominated her competition and still holds the OUA records for 200M and 400M individual medley events, set in 1995 when McMaster won the OUA championship. She was a two-time McMaster Female Athlete of the Year.

Graduating from Mac in 1992, Mark Heese made the transition from indoor to beach volleyball and represented Canada in three summer Olympics (1996 Atlanta, 2000 Sydney, 2004 Athens).  The highlight of his career came at the 1996 Games, when he and partner John Child captured the bronze medal in the inaugural Olympic beach volleyball competition.   As a beach player Heese won 10 national championships, and went on to a lengthy professional career. During his Marauder tenure, Heese was a key member of McMaster’s first OUA Championship team in 1992.

Barrie Shepley graduated from McMaster in 1986 and quickly became one of the pioneers of the burgeoning sport of triathlon.  As Canada’s national coach between 1991 and 2001, Shepley was the first Canadian triathlon coach at the summer Olympics as the sport made its debut at the 2000 Sydney games.  He was instrumental in the success of Canada’s Simon Whitfield, who captured the gold medal in Sydney, which elevated triathlon tremendously on the Canadian sports landscape.  He is also the coach of McMaster’s Andrew Yorke, who is an alternate on the 2012 Canadian triathlon team in London. Post-graduation,  Shepley served  on the McMaster cross country coaching staff for several years and coached with current Marauder coach Paula Schnurr, who represented Canada at two summer Olympics (1992, 1996) as a distance runner. 

Shepley is filing daily reports from the London Games on his blog at http://www.personalbest.ca/

McMaster Athletics and Recreation is proud to have three such esteemed former Marauders, representing the program through their work as Canadian broadcasters at this summer’s Olympic Games.