Jeffrey Lay was a member of the Streetsville Secondary School Tigers basketball team prior to taking up rowing on a whim. After graduating from the University of Western Ontario, he made the Canadian national team in 1993 and won the eights title at that year’s World Championships, alongside Dave Boyes, Gavin Hassett, Pat Newman, Brian Peaker, and the non-Olympians Christopher Cookson, Robert Fontaine, Peter Sommerwil and Bryan Thompson. Lay, with Fontaine, Hassett, and Thompson, switched to the lightweight coxless fours and finished fourth at the 1994 edition. Boyes and Peaker soon replaced Fontaine and Thompson and this quartet finished fourth at the 1995 World Championships and won a silver medal at the 1996 Summer Olympics, missing gold by just over half a second, losing to the Danes in the final. He also won silver medals in the lightweight pairs and fours at the 1995 Pan American Games.
Lay returned to the eights for the 1997 World Championships, winning a bronze medal alongside Thompson, Jon Beare, Chris Davidson, Chris Taylor, and the non-Olympians Graham McLaren, Anthony Shearing, Ben Storey, and Edward Winchester. Beare, Lay, Storey, and Winchester competed in the lightweight coxless fours the following year, but placed 11th. Lay returned to the eights for his final World Championship in 1999 and finished fourth alongside Boyes, Newman, McLaren, Shearing, Storey, Winchester, and the non-Olympians Matt McCarthy and Erik Oinonen. He retired from active competition soon after and became an accountant in 2004. He was made a member of the Mississauga Sports Hall of Fame in 2002 and the University of Western Ontario Hall of Fame in 2006. As of 2013 he is president of the Trenton Ontario Rowing and Paddling Club.
Canada