HIGH ACHIEVERS: Windsurfer Olympian Caroll-Ann Alie gliding into Canadian Sailing Hall of Fame

By Martin Cleary

When Caroll-Ann Alie reflects on her accomplished sailing career, she uses two interesting labels to distinguish her past from her present.

Her Volkswagen years occurred when the Gracefield, PQ, athlete was immersed in the infancy and growing years of windsurfing as a high-performance athlete.

For almost 25 years, she took her long board, large sail and stability bars around the world to three Summer Olympics, three Pan-American Games and 11 world championships, where she won three gold medals in five years during the 1980s.

Alie retired as a competitive sailboarder after the 2000 Sydney Olympics, but she never left the sport. She elected to continue as a recreational windsurfer and grow with the discipline as it morphed into various options like kite surfing, paddle surfing and now wing foiling.

Enjoying the consistent and dependable winds on the Columbia River Gorge in the northwestern United States, Alie is now experiencing her Ferrari years as she zips along the surface or takes “a magical carpet ride” above the water while wing foiling.

In wing foiling, she rides a long, stable board and holds onto a lightweight, inflatable “wing” to harness the energy of the wind.

Alie’s son Jacob Rosenberg, who won the men’s bronze medal at the first United States wing foiling championships in August, is remotely coaching her to become better at the new sailing discipline.

Alie, 64, has been plugged into and growing with the sport for almost the last quarter century. The Lyle, Washington, resident can be seen motoring on her board over the Columbia River between the states of Washington and Oregon, when she’s not working four days a week as a dietician, wellness coach and exercise physiologist with cardio and pulmonary rehabilitation patients.

“It (wing) looks like a kite and you hold it in your hands. The board can be three to four feet off the water at times,” said Alie, who earned BSc degrees in biology and kinesiology at the University of Ottawa. “I’ve put more time into it this summer. It’s so fast, so exciting.”

But Alie will need to take a break from wing foiling for the first weekend of October. She will be inducted with 15 other sailors and builders into the Canadian Sailing Hall of Fame at the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club on Oct. 5.

Alie is no stranger to halls of fame. Between 1993 and 2013, she was inducted into the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame, the Ottawa Sport Hall of Fame, the Quebec Sports Hall of Fame and the Quebec Sailing Hall of Fame.

“It’s a big honour,” said Alie, who has been the president of the United States Windsurfer Class Association for the past four years and created the West Coast Tour of events.

“I will be up there with all the top Canadians. It will be exciting to see everyone. I’m looking forward to it. It’s nice and humbling to be recognized as one of the best in Canada.”

Alie is especially happy to be inducted alongside Steven Tupper, a former Canadian team coach and windsurfing advocate. Tupper, a former Vancouver resident, will be inducted posthumously.

“Back in the 1980s, he always pushed for windsurfing, whether worldwide or nationally,” she explained. “He was a big proponent. I’m super proud of that.”

Windsurfing made its Olympic debut at the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Games. Alie just missed qualifying for those Games 40 years ago, but made the grade and represented Canada at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and the 2000 Sydney Olympics at age 40.

Despite experiencing food poisoning along with several teammates during her Olympic debut, Alie still considered the Barcelona Games her best because it was her first. She finished 14th overall in the Lechner sailboarding class.

In her other two Olympics, all the pieces “couldn’t come together” for her to challenge for a medal. She placed 12th at the Atlanta Olympics and 17th during the Sydney Olympics in the Mistral class.

Alie prepared for her Olympic journey by recording seven top-10 results at 11 world championships, which featured three gold-medal performances. She earned first-place results at the 1984 windsurfer worlds in Perth, Australia, the 1985 Mistral worlds in the Canary Islands and the 1988 IYRU women’s worlds in Buzios, Brazil.

At the Pan-American Games, she was the gold medallist in 1995 and collected silvers in 1987 and 1999.

The Canadian Yachting Association (now Sail Canada) recognized Alie’s contribution to sailing on the national scene by naming her the female athlete of the year in 1988 and 1995.

While Alie thoroughly enjoys wing foiing from May to October and driving an hour for winter snowboarding on Mt. Hood, she also likes to organize events so others can enjoy the various windsurfer disciplines.

“In my day in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Ottawa-Hull organized events and they were all volunteers,” Alie recalled.

“I feel it’s my turn to give back. I do a lot of behind-the-scenes work. It’s going in the right direction and I have a good committee.”