Cindy Shatto

Born in June 1957,[2] Shatto began roller skating at the age of 2 and later took up acrobatics, modern dance and learnt to play the violin.[3] She started competitive diving at the age of 8 in her family's back yard pool in Willowdale, Toronto. She would play diving games with her father, using a long garbage sweeping pole for her to run and leap over "like a porpoise". Under the early coaching of John Dickinson, Shatto won "just about every age-group meet she entered".[4] Among her first recognised competitions was the Ontario under-10s 1-metre diving championships, where at the age of 8 she scored 84.20 points and won in her age group.[5] At the age of 9, she would practice 33 feet (10 m) platform diving at the Summerville open-air pool, although as it was built on the edge of Lake Ontario, sometimes the wind would blow her off the tower. Occasionally, the extreme cold weather would turn her blue after 20 minutes of practicing, but she never complained.[4] A few weeks after her ninth birthday, she became the Ontario diving champion in the girls under-10 age category with a score of 132.75[6] and followed it up by becoming the United States diving champion in her age group.[7]

By the age of 10, she had experience with playing the violin, acrobatics, contemporary dancing and baton twirling. Her mother described her as persistent, saying that "if she discovered something she couldn't master, she'd get mad, sulk, but stick it out until she got better."[4] Shortly before turning 11, as a member of the Etobicoke Diving Club, she won the under-14 tower event in the Ontario open championships, which brought her competitive record to 26 first place finishes, two second placed finishes and one third place finish across 29 events.[8] Shortly before her twelfth birthday, she finished in second place during the 1969 Ontario open 3-metre diving championships in the girls' under 15 category.[9] At the age of 13, she was invited to train with national coach Don Webb, which required her to move away from home and live with Webb's family, the first two years being in Winnipeg.[10]

During these earlier years, she got used to eating excessive amounts of chips and gravy, with other children using it as a nickname for her. In 1972, she was admitted to hospital with constant stomach pains due to excessive amounts of greasy food consumption. Her gallbladder had to be removed, leaving her weak and unable to train during the winter of 1971–1972.[4]

By 1973, she had been living with her coach Don Webb and his family for three years and would train for four to five hours daily, six days a week or longer when preparing for a major competition. She and Linda Cuthbert, another diver who also lived with the Webb family, would train for an hour at lunchtime, with a heavier workload on Saturday and a rest day on Sunday. Describing her life in 1973 up to that point, she expressed that "Diving has been my whole life, just about. I enjoy it. I like the competition, the travel and I like meeting people. It has kept me from being bored." Shatto would show little emotion during a competition, except upon winning and did not like her father watching her diving as they would both get nervous.[4] In the same year, she represented her country at the world championships held in Yugoslavia.[3]

In 1974, under Webb's coaching, Shatto won a gold medal in the British Commonwealth Games in Christchurch on the 3 meter springboard diving event.[11] Following her commonwealth success, she had established herself as the likeliest contender in Canada to win a gold medal in the 1976 Summer Olympics, being described as "one of Canada's best divers". Don Webb described her as being a natural diver with class, suggesting that "what other divers have to learn comes naturally to her. She's got the style and determination".[12]

She went through a "low" depressive period in the mid-1970s by her own admission and "lost the sparkle" for competitive diving, admitting her "attitude was zero". Her performances around this time were described as only "barely" reflecting her talent as a top three diver in Canada. She considered giving it up to live a more traditional life of partying, cottage vacations and curfew-free summers. Her father, who was described as being a perfectionist, was unable to understand her reversal in attitude and found it difficult to understand when she expressed her lack of interest in diving. Her older sister Becky was recognised in her high school as being a "female athlete of the year", without the pressures of competition. Shatto began to compare her lifestyle to that of her sister's, thinking that "her life just started to look better than mine". After a period of reflection, she considered the positive aspects of her lifestyle, including international travel and the people she had met. She was offered advice by fellow diver Beverly Boys which she said had "helped put me back together again". She began serious practicing again around August 1975 and accepted that, while happy with her performances, if she were to perform poorly it would be due to lack of practice and not attitude.[13]

She had taken a year out of high school in 1976 to train for the Olympics full time and during the trials said that diving in the Olympics had been a "dream since I began diving". After the five of eight dives, Shatto was in second place but dropped to fifth position following a sixth dive that was scored controversially. The Montreal Gazette at the time expressed the opinion that she had been "cheated out of at least a bronze", suggesting that the Soviet and Swedish judges were bias when marking the dives although Shatto felt that finishing fifth in the world was acceptable.[10] Following the Olympics, she took six-month sabbatical after feeling "physically let down" by not winning anything in the competition. Prior to this, she had not taken more than three weeks off at a time and spent her sabbatical relaxing and did not set foot on a diving board for the entire time. She returned to training in July 1977 and was reported to be "looking toward the world championships" in 1978, with her training consisting of four to five hours a day of diving.[14]

She announced her retirement from competitive diving in June 1978 on the eve of the 1978 Commonwealth Games, citing the "nomadic life of a world-class athlete" as being the primary factor in her loss of interest in the sport.[15] She also admitted that the controversy surrounding the Olympics two years prior was a contributing factor in her decision[10] and that she lost her motivation, instead preferring to get a job and earn her own money.[16]