Me And My Kooky Fencing Friend

First, an admission: If the headline on this post isn't a total ripoff, it's close.
(if you want to know from where, the answer's right here).
And I wouldn't exactly call Sherraine Schalm kooky, though she cracks me up often enough (if the comely lass from Alberta can't make you laugh, it's your problem, not hers).
As I write this, Sherraine is hours away from her third Olympic appearance at the Summer Olympics. And, as this revealing piece penned a few days ago by the Toronto Star's Randy Starkman illustrates, her long road from Athens 2004 to Beijing 2008 has been anything but a smooth and straight line (a painful divorce and depression among the demons she had to conquer along the way). But once again, she enters an Olympics as Canada's best hope to win its first fencing medal of any colour in Games history (women's epee is her event).
Sherraine and I first crossed paths eight years ago before the Sydney Olympics. She was one of the first in a series of profiles of local Olympians I tackled for the Ottawa Sun that year and, it must be said now, the most enjoyable of the lot. Rudimentary didn't begin to describe my knowledge of fencing (that assessment still isn't far from the truth) but what was expected to be the typical 15-20 minute interview evolved into a two-hour conversation with one of the most wonderfully engaging people you will ever meet.
I've always appreciated a sense of humour (even like to think I own one myself ... well, most of the time) and whether she's talking or writing, Sherraine's sharp sense of wit is never far from the surface.
Case in point: A few years back, when she was putting the finishing touches on Running With Swords, her often-humorous look at her sport and her life (still plenty available at a Chapters near you and well worth the read), the book was still untitled at the time. Smart ass that I can be sometimes, I suggested "Piste Off" (a reference to the fencing court) during a telephone conversation. Not missing a beat, Sherraine told me she'd already had the same thought. Alas, while great minds thought alike, it didn't make it to print.
We've fallen out of touch since I moved on from the Sun (and off the amateur sports beat) last fall. But as the days and weeks to Beijing grew closer, I picked up on her story once more. And there is no Canadian athlete I'll be cheering more loudly for at these Beijing Games.
While Sherraine calls Montreal home now (she spent a lot of her pre-Olympic training time in Hungary), with any luck, she'll make her way back to Ottawa sometime after the Games are done. Maybe she'll even do it with a precious Olympic medal in hand. With or without the big prize, though, she will still be the same Sherraine to me.
Her prodigious fencing talent is perhaps only surpassed by her ability to chronicle it all (her CBC blog being evidence of that). I've heard she might like to be a journalist someday and, well, the world I left behind can't help but become a better place if she chooses to be a part of it.
Let's just say it's a happening that surely wouldn't leave me feeling "piste off."
Nope, not at all. Not in the very least.