After winning a bronze medal in the coxed fours at the 1983 Pan American Games, with Ron Burak, Blair Horn, Nick Toulmin, and Paul Tessier, Paul Steele’s greatest success with the Canadian national rowing team came at his second major meet representing the nation. Alongside Horn, Dean Crawford, Mark Evans, Mike Evans, Grant Main, Brian McMahon, Kevin Neufeld, and Pat Turner, he captured the coxed eights title at the 1984 Summer Olympics, finishing just over 0.4 seconds ahead of the Americans. He continued his streak at the 1986 Commonwealth Games by winning the coxless fours event, with Main, Neufeld, and Turner, but slipped to fourth at that year’s World Championships. The quartet, joined by McMahon, Andy Crosby, Dave Ross, Don Telfer, and John Wallace, finished fifth in the eights at the 1987 World Championships, and then exchanged Ross and Turner for Jason Dorland and Jamie Schaffer for the 1988 Summer Olympics, where the crew failed to defend their crown and placed sixth. A graduate of the University of British Columbia, he has been inducted, along with the rest of his gold medal-winning crew, into the British Columbia Sports (1985) and Canadian Olympic (2003) Halls of Fame.
Canada