Angella Taylor-Issajenko won so much, and so often, during her decade-long run atop the Canadian sprinting world, it’s hard for her to pinpoint where exactly each of her historic achievements actually occurred.
For those watching from afar, those memories of the Jamaican-born track prodigy are easier to locate.
There was Brisbane, Australia, in 1982, when she claimed two Commonwealth Games gold medals — setting a Canadian record to dominate the 100 metre and anchoring the 4×400-metre relay — while adding another silver and bronze for good measure. There was Los Angeles, Calif., in 1984, when she earned an Olympic silver medal in the 4×100-metre relay. Or Ottawa, Ont., in 1985, where she was made a Member of the Order of Canada, adding to a lengthy list of awards that also includes a pair of Velma Springstead Trophy wins honouring her as Canada’s top female athlete.
Three decades after the conclusion of her historic career, Taylor-Issajenko and her daughter, Natasha Issajenko — a personal trainer who grew up running track under her mother’s tutelage — spoke with Sportsnet to reflect on those years in the spotlight.
Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.
Sportsnet: You’ve been a trailblazer for Canadian athletes and you’ve obviously had an incredible impact on our country’s sports history. To start off, how do you view your legacy on track and field in Canada?
Angella Taylor-Issajenko: You know what, it’s funny. When you’re running, you pile up all these awards, but you don’t think much of them because you’re moving on to the next goal, which is to train really hard and to win the next meet, you know? It’s when you retire [that] you sort of think, “Oh my God, did I really do all this?”
Because as I said, you get these awards, it’s a medal or whatever, and you sort of put it down somewhere. You don’t think about it. Because what you’re thinking about at the time is, “I’ve got to prepare for the next race.”
So what has it been like going back and reflecting a little bit on everything you accomplished while you were in it?
Taylor-Issajenko: Now I’m sort of in awe of myself. (laughs) I’m tooting my own horn right now, but I think that’s the feeling, you know? And of course, it brings back all the memories. Even though it was so long ago and I’m now 60 years old, I have vivid memories of running this meet in Europe, or going to the World Championships or going to the Olympics.
What do you feel when you watch those old races and see yourself setting records back in the ’80s? What kind of pride do you feel in what you accomplished?
Taylor-Issajenko: A tremendous pride. Now is the time that you see them and you look back — there were races that I’d never seen on film that people will send me. A coach in France just sent me a race that we ran in Japan before heading down to Australia for the Commonwealth Games. I’d never seen that race before — and I just got it last week.
It brings back tremendous amounts of memories, because sometimes you forget where you’ve been and where you ran these races, or you see pictures of yourself that you’ve never ever seen before. And it brings back amazing memories, you know?
How do you see your impact on all the black athletes that have followed in your footsteps, and all the women in track that have followed you?
Taylor-Issajenko: I hope it’s been very positive. When I ran — my gosh — my first meet, I was at the Commonwealth Games in ’78, and I didn’t even get out of the heats. And the next year, I was ninth in the world. I was one of the first women athletes, and black athletes, in Canada to sort of go out there. And I could go to Europe and win any race. I’ve won almost all of those huge meets in Europe. So … it’s all been, I hope, very positive for all the other young athletes coming up. Even though I think some of them now, the young ones, don’t remember us. (laughs)
Natasha Issajenko: We trained at the same facility that she would train at — at York University. Everyone there knew her…. Even now, you go places and people are like, “Oh, I know that name.” It’s really, really amazing, especially her having the Order of Canada. She’s such a strong, dedicated person — she’s the hardest-working person I’ve ever seen. Even training, everyone would say that about her.
At the Toronto Track and Field Centre where we’d train, a lot of the other people that I’d talk to — not only athletes but other coaches — they would always say that they’d never seen someone work as hard as her. Ever. No one in that building, no man, no woman — she went there and she trained so hard. She would just try to do the most that she could do to succeed.
What was it like being one of the first black Canadian women to really break out on the international scene, as you said — did you feel, at the time, any kind of weight on your shoulders from that?
Taylor-Issajenko: You know what? No. No, I actually didn’t — the only time I ever faced discrimination was, we had a meet in DDR, which was East Germany at the time. We were leaving Germany to go to Paris to run relays, and we were in West Berlin. We had to spend the night in West Berlin, and there was all of us, you know — myself, Mark McCoy, Desai Williams, Tony Sharpe, Molly Killingbeck, all the athletes that [coach] Charlie Francis had. Ben Johnson was there as well. He wasn’t the world-record holder yet or No. 1 in the world.
But we stopped off in West Germany and we decided we were going to go out and go to a club. And a person came up to us and said, “Black people are not allowed in here.” And my coach — Charlie Francis, of course, is white — got so mad! He got so pissed off at them. He was yelling and screaming at them there. Honestly, in my life, that was one of the first times that I had encountered racism.
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Tell me about the transition to coaching, and what you tried to instil in your kids when they were starting out in their own track careers.
Taylor-Issajenko: Work ethic, you know. To go out there and do your very best. I hope that they didn’t feel pressure in thinking that they had to accomplish what I did.
Issajenko: She made sure we were prepared every single day to put in the work to train. And even watching her, a lot of the time she’d spend at home, she’d be writing in her training book — I feel like if any pressure came, it would be from how much she wanted us to also do well. When you see that, and you’re a young person, you put pressure on yourself — not because your mom was so amazing and you know that, but more because you know how much she wants you to do well. You know how much she wants you to go as far as she did.
Taylor-Issajenko: To be honest, the years that I spent in sports, it shaped my life so much. I don’t feel that there’s anything that could happen in my life that could be as stressful as being in a room with the other seven fastest girls in the world, waiting to go and run that race. Whether it was the World Championships final or the Olympic final — that has been the most stressful of my life, so there is nothing else that I feel that could equate to that.
And I think that the time that I spent in sports was so positive, and that’s what I wanted to instil in the people that I coach — the tremendous amount of strength that you get from it.
Issajenko: She always taught us to not really idolize athletes. Because we’re all really the same — you just have to work hard. She taught us that no matter what, as long as you put in the work, you’re going to be strong — you’re going to be fast. You’ve got to believe in yourself, and you can’t ever really think that you’re going to lose. You’ve got to either make it a huge part of your life, or don’t do it at all, because that’s the only way you’re really going to make it, especially in a sport like track and field.
Taylor-Issajenko: Yes! Because, listen, when I had made a big breakthrough, I remember in ’79, we had a meet in East Germany. And that’s where I watched Marita Koch break the world record over 200 metres — and you can imagine somebody who’s just starting in track and field, and you see this. But then I realized, you know, this is the person that I want to beat. Because I want to be the best in the world. I can’t idolize someone. I can’t put this person up on a pedestal, because this is the person that I’m hoping I’m going to beat one day.
So consequently, I’ve never had idols in track and field — I don’t feel like I should idolize someone that, I hope I’m going to kick their butt some time in the future, you know what I mean? Because if I hold you in awe, then I’m probably going to walk up to you in a race and be scared of you. That’s what I felt. I think in your whole life, in whatever you’re doing, you should never idolize anybody. Because I think that’s saying to yourself, “This person is out of reach. This person is way better than I am, I’m never going to be that.” You’ve got to march out there and think that you are the best, all the time.
That’s one of the reasons that I love Ben Johnson so much, because he never went into a race thinking he was going to lose. It was kind of like, “Who’s finishing second today?” you know what I mean? And I think in anything in your life, whether you’re a journalist or whether you’re a teacher, whatever you do, you have to aspire to be the best.
What’s one message you would leave for young athletes that are coming up today, following along the path you laid out?
Taylor-Issajenko: The same thing — whatever you set your mind to, you have to give it 100 per cent. It can’t be half-measures. You have to decide, “This is what I’m going to do, and I’m going to put everything I can into it to be successful at it.”
We live in a time when, certainly with the colour of your skin, I mean, if you want to be whatever you want to be, you have to go out there with confidence and do it. Nobody is better than you are, nobody is superior to who you are, regardless of whether they’re white or whether they’re green or pink or whatever. I think it’s great now for black kids — they can be whatever they want. Nobody has to feel inferior or feel downtrodden, or whatever.
For my grandchildren — I’m going to have four grandchildren soon — I think the world is theirs to go and get, you know what I mean? Being black is never going to hold you back.
