Sandy MacDonald

Sandy MacDonald was captain of both the ice hockey and football teams at Prince of Wales College and, as a student at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, was selected to represent Great Britain in the former sport at the 1928 Winter Olympics, although he was eventually dropped from the team because he was a Canadian citizen. He settled gradually on sailing as his athletic pursuit of choice, having already competed in the sport as a medical student at McGill University, and eventually became a member of the Royal St. Lawrence Yacht Club. Thirty-two years after his first selection for the Olympics he was granted a second chance, this time as a member of Canada’s entry to Dragon class sailing at the 1960 Summer Games. There, alongside teammates Gordon Norton and Lynn Watters, he finished fifth among 27 teams. Four years later he again represented Canada at the Games, this time in the 5.5 metre class, where he, Bernard Skinner, and Doug Woodward were seventh among 15 yachts.

In-between his Olympic appearances, MacDonald won a gold medal in the Dragon class at the 1963 Pan-American Games, alongside Watters and the non-Olympian Peter Dorion, and took numerous other national and international accolades over his lengthy career. By profession MacDonald worked as a surgeon in several cities and also served in the Royal Canadian Navy as a medical officer. He was inducted into the Prince Edward Island Sports Hall of Fame in 1974 and, when he died at the age of 99 years, 44 days in October 2003, he was the longest-lived Canadian Olympian, having surpassed Robert Zimmerman, who died one day after his 99th birthday in 1980.