Sisters don’t always agree — not even twins who have a lot in common as Rhoda and Rhona Wurtele.
Rhona told students from Trafalgar High School, their alma mater, to not drink because they’ll get sick.
“Speak for yourself,” quipped her sister, grinning.
The pair used to ski competitively and were the only members of Canada’s alpine ski team for the 1948 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland. They are now 96 years old.
Pioneers of Canadian women’s skiing, they were inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in 2015. Now, they’re marking the 70th anniversary of the Moritz Games by hanging out with a few students from Trafalgar.
“I think it’s crazy that they came to my school,” beams student Marianna Cardin.
The Wurtele sisters began skiing when they were kids, copying their brothers.
“We would go charging up the Westmount mountain and go right down the trail to Cote des Neiges where the big jump was,” says Rhoda. “We even tried jumping!”
But it wasn’t until they were students at Trafalgar that they competed for the first time with classmates in Saint-Sauveur.
“We all had our turns to run down and found out that we won,” Rhoda tells Global News. “I don’t know who was first, Rhona or I, but we came in first and second and we were quite surprised because we’d really never done any competition. So we got the bug!”
They continued competing worldwide eventually making it all the way to the Olympics, competing in downhill and slalom racing.
They didn’t win any medals, but they competed hard.
“Whatever we went into, we were always competing against each other, of course. “But we were always even in whatever we did,” Rhona says. However, her sister doesn’t see it that way.
“We just did the best we could and it was fun. There was no competition!”
But they liked being together — that was the best part.
“It was quite wonderful. Right up to marriage later on when the twins separated,” Rhoda laughs. “Rhona went to the west and I stayed in Montreal.”
Rhoda still skis, but her sister does not.
“Now I’ve got these — problems,” her sister frowns in disgust. “These are all from injuries, you know!”
But she’s not sorry for being so athletic, and neither is her sister. Their main message to the kids is to stay active and above all, have fun.
That’s one thing they both agree on.
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