It is usually enough of an achievement to excel in one sport. But Greg Haydenluck managed to wear Canada’s colours internationally in two sports. After excelling at track and field’s multi-event decathlon, Haydenluck represented Canada in bobsleigh at two Olympic Games and placed consistently in the medals on the international scene.

Born in Emerson, Haydenluck moved to Portage for high school, where he played two seasons for the Portage Terriers of the Manitoba Junior Hockey League. In fact, he might have pursued a hockey scholarship at a U.S. university if he hadn’t come to the realization he wasn’t going to play in the NHL and that track and field was his best chance for international success.

In track and field, he set provincial high school rural records in the 200m and 400m. He would later better his mark in the 400m at the 1977 Provincial A meet with a time of 49.1 seconds which still stood in the record books 30 years later.  His prowess on the track earned him a scholarship to the University of South Dakota, where his natural athleticism led him to change his focus to the decathlon. Considered South Dakota’s finest-ever decathlete, he still holds the overall state record, and was a two-time NCAA Division II All-American during the early 1980s. In 2001, he was inducted into the South Dakota Coyotes Athletics Hall of Fame.

The 1985 and 1987 Canadian decathlon champion, Haydenluck finished seventh in the decathlon at the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane, Australia, and was the silver medallist at the 1985 Pan Pacific Games in Berkeley, California.

But after failing to qualify for the 1984 Summer Olympics, Haydenluck was recruited to help revitalize the national bobsleigh program, as Canada was due to host the 1998 Winter Olympics in Calgary. Despite crashing 10 times in his first year, to the utter amazement of the more-experienced Europeans who couldn’t believe what these “crazy Canadians” were trying to do, Haydenluck soon got the hang of it. Over the next few years, he would consistently place in the medals and even won some World Cup races.

Haydenluck piloted a two-man sled to a 10th-place finish and a four-man sled to 13th at the 1988 Winter Olympics. In the 1990 World Cup series, Canada finished with the silver medal, second only to the powerhouse Germans. Haydenluck was fourth in the two-man sled at the 1991 World Championships and 11th in the two-man at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France. Despite the next Winter Olympics being only another two years away in 1994 in Lillehammer, Norway, Haydenluck retired following Albertville, tired of the lifestyle of poverty that accompanies being an international Canadian bobsledder.