Staying on track

Cyprian Enweani (MD'89) had just come off one of his best indoor seasons in track and field and the 1988 Seoul Olympics loomed on the horizon.

But Enweani was also about to enter his final year of medical school at the University of Saskatchewan.

That meant 36-hour shifts at the hospital and virtually no time to train.

“I had actually decided to retire,” said Enweani, who was one of Canada’s top sprinters.

He was a clean athlete and didn’t think he could go much further in the sport, especially with the demands of his career in medicine.

He was walking down a hallway at RUH when he met Dr. Fred Oleniuk who asked him how his training was going.

Enweani told him he thought he was done because he couldn’t train with the medical demands.

Oleniuk told him to talk to the college to see if they could do something to accommodate his Olympic aspirations.

The late Ken Haight, who had worked with Enweani since he entered med school, helped him find a way to do both.

“Ken Haight was the person that made that work for me,” Enweani said. “He was in my corner the whole time.

“He found a way for me to be part of a national team at the same time I was in medical school.”

The college let him do all his electives first, then take his four weeks of holidays, and if he made the team get six weeks leave of absence.

Two months later, Enweani was in Ottawa where at the national championships he won the 200 metres and a ticket to the Olympics.

“I came back to school and said so I guess I need that six weeks off,” Enweani recalled.

Enweani would go on to finish ninth in the 200 metres at the Seoul Olympics.

“(The College of Medicine) could have shut me down at the beginning (of his school) ... but they supported me all the way through.

“It was always about how to make it work,” Enweani said.

Enweani was a member of the USask Huskies track and field team from 1982-88. 

In that time, he won nine Canada West medals, three national medals and the Canada West and national team title in 1986-87. He also competed three times in the FISU World University Games and was Canada’s flag bearer in 1987.

The Enweanis came to Canada from Denmark in 1971. His father Cyprian Sr. was a veterinarian and they first went to Guelph, Ont. for three years. They moved to Regina for three years before coming to Saskatoon in 1976.

Enweani went to Caswell School Grades 7-8 where the principal at that time was Dennis Berling, an international track official who had just been to the Montreal Olympics.

“He had (former Huskie great) Diane Jones (Konihowski), who had come back from the Olympics, come to the school to give a talk about what it was like to be in the Olympics,” Enweani remembers.

“I went up after and asked her, ‘What do I have to do to get into the Olympics?’ 

“She just kind of chuckled, but told me to join a track club as a start.”

Enweani would join the school club along with the Saskatoon Track Club and at his first Knights of Columbus track meet he set three bantam records.

Enweani would go on to excel in track and academics at Bedford Road Collegiate before coming to USask.

Read more about Cyprian Enweani at the Green & White.