Rhona and Rhoda Wurtele are identical twins and Canada's women's skiing pioneers and champions of the 1940s and 1950s. The two of them made up the entire 1948 Olympic Women’s Alpine team for Canada.
The Wurtele twins were born in 1922 in the province of Quebec. They began skiing at age five when their father strapped two planks of wood onto their feet and pushed them out the front door; which happened to be on top of Mount Royal in Montreal. The twins never stopped skiing. By age 11 they had skied off the senior ski jump on Mount Royal (women still do not compete in Ski Jumping at the Olympic games).
They were Canada's first women's Olympic alpine ski team, and competed in Canada and the U.S. from 1942 through 1959 after they were married and had children. They were true pioneers for women in sports and for Canadian downhill skiing. As soon as they began competing in 1942, they won almost every race they entered. Rhoda swept the Taschereau downhill at Mont Tremblant Quebec, winning by 24 seconds (an eternity in today’s ski racing), bettering both the women and all the men in the competition. Rhona placed second among the women, ninth overall. The men grumbled for a while about rotten weather and malfunctioning signals, but eventually it was acknowledged: Rhona and Rhoda were monarchs of the slopes.
World War II caused the cancellation of two Olympics in a row; the twins were finally able to compete at the 1948 Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland. The two of them made up the entire Women’s Alpine Team, but accidents during training and trials meant both left without medals.
Despite their disappointments at the Olympics, the Wurtele twins eventually turned to teaching skiing, first to children (through the Ski Jays and Ski Chicks clubs) then in the 1960s to the mothers who brought their children to the slopes. Still skiing well into their 80s, Rhona and Rhoda Wurtele continue to run the Twinski Club, and set the stage for a legacy of Canadian women in skiing, directly influencing a long line of medal winners from Lucile Wheeler, the first woman to win an Olympic skiing medal for Canada, to Anne Heggtveit, Nancy Greene, Kathy Kreiner and Kerrin Lee-Gartner.
Rhona Wurtele is the mother of noted Canadian dancers Margie Gillis and Christopher Gillis and of ice hockey player Jere Gillis.
In 1946 the twins were awarded the Thelma Springstead Rose Bowl as Best Canadian Woman Athlete (sic). In 1947 they were runners-up for the Lou Marsh Trophy, given by the Canadian Press to Canada's Most Outstanding Athlete. They were inducted into the Canadian Amateur Athletic Hall of Fame in 1953 for both their swimming and skiing achievements. Both were inducted into the U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame (now the American Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame) in 1969 and to the Canadian Ski Hall of Fame in 1982. Other honours have included:
(Also available in French, entitled "Sans limites")