As of the 2012 Olympics, Nattrass is one of only 122 athletes (and one of only 46 still active), all sports, to compete in at least six Olympic Games, appearing in 1976, '88, '92, 2000, '04 and '08. She won a gold medal at the World Championships in 1974, '75, '77, '78, '79, '81, and 2006.
Beginnings
She was introduced to trap shooting by her father Floyd Nattrass, who competed for Canada at the World Championships in 1958 and 1968 and at the Olympics in 1964.[2] Nattrass said of her father:
"While other kids would go to the lake for the summer, we always went to trap shoots. My dad started when I was 5; we'd go to shoots, and I did everything I could do be a part of it. Then when I turned 12, he taught me how to shoot."[3]
Olympics and Commonwealth Games
In the 1976 Summer Olympics she became the first ever woman to participate in a shooting event at the Olympics, as shooting was open to both sexes until 1992. She won a silver medal at the 2001 world championships in Cairo, Egypt in the trap event. She finished 9th in the 2000 Summer Olympics and 6th in the 2004 Summer Olympics in women's trap shooting.
At the 2006 Commonwealth Games Nattrass won three medals: two silver in women's double trap pairs and women's trap pairs and a bronze in women's trap.
She won the Trap Shooting event at the World Championships in 1981 and 2006, twenty-five years apart.[3]
After the 1996 Summer Olympics, the International Shooting Union decided to discontinue the trap and skeet shooting events for women and instead allow women to compete in the double trap, where two clay saucers are thrown simultaneously. This is a difficult transition that Nattrass - who won two World Cups in the double trap in 1993 - equated to a downhill skier having to switch to cross-country. She led a campaign - writing letters, doing surveys, playing politics - against the decision to remove the two events. After five years, the campaign succeeded and women's skeet and trap shooting remained in the Olympics.[4]
In 1981, she was awarded the Lou Marsh Trophy as Canadian Athlete of the Year and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. She is also listed as a recipient of the Vanier Award for Outstanding Young Canadians.[5]
She has travelled around the world at various competitions for over three decades, nearly always accompanied by her mother and coach Marie.[3][6]
As of August 2018[update] Nattrass serves on the board of directors, Sections Chairs of the Shooting Federation of Canada.[7]
Education and research
Nattrass earned a bachelor's degree in Physical Education from the University of Alberta in 1972 and a Masters in 1974, and has since been an instructor, administrator, lecturer and consultant in physical education and sports psychology. In between her first and second Olympic appearances in 1976 and 1988, she earned her doctorate from the University of Alberta in 1987.[8][9]
Since 1996, Nattrass has lived on Vashon Island near Seattle.[3] She moved there when she joined the Pacific Medical Center as a medical researcher in September 1996.[9] She owns and runs the Puget Sound Osteoporosis Center, where she studies the effects of aging in bones on active sportswomen in their forties and older, takes part in clinical trials, and provides pro-bono screenings in the community.[10]
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