Emma ROBINSON

A year before completing her bachelor’s degree at Trinity University, Emma Robinson joined the Canadian national team and won a bronze medal at the 1993 World Championships as a member of the coxless fours crew that included Shannon Crawford and the non-Olympians Julie Jespersen-Platt and Kelly Mahon. In 1994 the lineup exchanged Crawford and Platt for Maria Maunder and the non-Olympian Jennifer Browett, but finished eighth. In the eights Robinson, alongside Jespersen-Platt, Mahon, Maunder, Kathleen Heddle, Theresa Luke, Anna Van der Kamp, Lesley Thompson-Willie, and the non-Olympian Rachel Starr, placed seventh. The same squad, with Browett in place of Heddle, had won a gold medal at the 1994 Commonwealth Regatta. The following year, the eights squad traded Heddle and Starr for Jessica Monroe and Tosha Tsang and finished sixth, but a modified crew, with Heather McDermid and Alison Korn substituting for Jespersen-Platt and Mahon, earned a silver medal at the 1996 Summer Olympics. At those Games, Robinson and Van der Kamp also competed in the coxless pairs, placing fifth.

From that point on Robinson rarely failed to reach the podium. With Korn she won the coxless pairs event at the next two editions of the World Championships, before switching partners to Luke and winning it again in 1999, as well as at that year’s Pan American Championships. In the eights Robinson won silver at the 1997 World Championships (alongside Korn, Monroe, Thompson-Willie, Buffy Alexander-Williams, Laryssa Biesenthal, Dorota Urbaniak, Kristen Wall, and the non-Olympian Kubet Weston) and bronze at the 1998 (with Heather Davis and Marnie McBean in place of Monroe and Wall) and 1999 (with Luke instead of Davis) editions. Making these feats even more impressive, however, was the fact that Robinson was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and underwent surgery prior to her victories during the 1999 season. Her final major international competition was the 2000 Summer Olympics, where she placed fourth in the coxless pairs with Luke and won a bronze medal in the eights with her 1999 World Championship crew (with Davis substituting for Weston). She earned her medical degree in 2002 from the University of Toronto and now works as a radiologist.