Name: Donna Marie Vakalis
Sport: Modern Pentathlon
Hometown: Toronto, ON
Nickname: D
Favorite Sports Memory:
Flying across the country, exhausted, from just having won the national championships to hurry up and successfully defend my Masters thesis!
Favorite Quote:
Style makes a difficult action into a graceful gesture, introduces rhythm into fatality. Style is to be courageous without disorder, to give necessity the appearance of freedom.” ~ From What is sport? by Roland Barthes. Translated by Richard Howard.
CAN Fund Testimonial:
Without CAN Fund, I would be a recreational athlete. CAN Fund is absolutely crucial to quality performance: Receiving $6000 from CAN Fund is a critical piece of funding I put toward the level of coaching, necessary equipment, travel and nutrition that will ultimately make medal-worthy performances possible…On my own, I really cannot afford to pursue being an elite athlete.
Best Result:
National Champion 2009 and 2010,
2008 Summer Olympic International Female Reserve
Fun Facts:
My not-so-secret (not-so-athletic) identity is being an intern architect. I have the best employer, a landscape architecture office in Toronto called JR+A. Although in the office during the day, I may occasionally daydream of training sets I will do that evening or early in the morning… the flipside is during training, when I daydream of design solutions to building problems for work.
Website: thisisdonna.com