Cathy Turner:
Proof that hard work,determination pay off

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When Cathy Turner was gliding around the short-track speed skating rink at the U.S. Olympic training center in Lake Placid back in 1990, she had a one-track mind-set: winning at least one gold medal in the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France.
As an athlete, the ability to keep her eye on the prize has always been a Turner forte. Commitment, dedication and hard work were words she lived by. Her ambition-indeed, her obsession-was to be the fastest short-track female speed skater in the world. Never mind that she had been away from the sport for almost nine years, or that she was 26, almost ancient in a sport dominated by teenagers.
It never occurred to Turner that a gold medal-which she won in the 500-meter sprint in both the 1992 and 1994 Winter Games-would become a gold key that would unlock so many doors leading to so many income opportunities. In her mind, winning the gold was not the means to an end. Simply put, she wasn’t in it for the money.
Besides, she had a degree in computer systems from Northern Michigan University.
“You go to the Olympics not really expecting anything,” Turner says. “I had been a computer programmer before (the Olympics), so I had a backup. Of course, my goal was to win a gold medal, but it wasn’t because I would get rich and live this glamorous life. I never thought about (money).”
When Turner returned from France, though, a funny thing happened on her way back to a normal existence.
“The phone never stopped ringing,” she recalls. “It was from call-waiting to call-waiting. It just kept beeping. I’d never experienced anything like that. It was so busy, I started to lose my voice, started to get little nodes on my vocal cords from talking to so many people.”
There were the usual perks that go with being an Olympic champion: She was honored by the Rochester community; she was the subject of newspaper and magazine articles; she appeared on national television; she attended a state dinner at the White House, courtesy of President George Bush.
That was only the beginning. Opportunity didn’t come knocking in 1992, it stormed her home in Hilton.
Now, seven years and four Olympic medals later-a silver and a bronze to go with the two golds-Turner still finds herself standing before what can best be described as a buffet feast of career choices, ranging from personal appearances to corporate motivational speaking to doing a movie of her life.
Most of them, though, will have to wait. Turner’s priority now is her 10-month-old daughter, Britney, who was born on March 15, 1999, underwent emergency open-heart surgery 12 days later and may face more surgery in a few months.
Instead of “been there, done that,” it’s no wonder that Turner might say, “been everywhere, done everything.” That’s why being a stay-at-home mom is where her heart is.
“This is what I’ve always longed for,” she said, “because I was always traveling all over the world and this and that …What’s really important in my heart was family and kids and that sort of thing.”
And yes, she says, she plans to have more children.
Turner remains incredibly marketable. Her agent, Keith Kreiter of Edge Sports International, is constantly getting requests for her to appear here or speak there. She has a story to tell, beginning with feeling incredible pressure to win as a young girl to her comeback at age 26, to her high-risk pass on the outside to beat the Chinese world record holder in the 500 meters in Lillehammer six years ago.
“People just love her story,” Kreiter says. “She’s doing stuff for Xerox at multiple locations throughout the country.”
There almost has been a waiting list of corporate clients since Turner returned from Japan, where she competed in her third Winter Olympics two years ago. In addition to Xerox Corp., that list includes IBM Corp., Bausch & Lomb Inc., Motorola Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., Castle Chemical, the Ladies Professional Golf Association and 3M Corp.
At first, Turner says, “people hire you as a celebrity to come to a corporate event, just as a celebrity, sign autographs and show medals. Eventually, they started asking me to say a few words and then they started to hire me as a speaker because they liked my story.”
Turner commands a fee ranging from $4,000 to $7,000 for two hours. But, Kreiter says, “she’s very generous with her time. She’ll reduce her fee if it’s for a good cause. There are other high-profile athletes who just won’t budge, regardless.”
“We were very impressed by her,” says Heather Thalheimer, New Hampshire chairwoman of the Women’s Federation for World Peace, a women’s service organization. Turner was invited to be the keynote speaker in 1995 when a group of Japanese women came to the United States to form a bond of “sisterhood” with members of the WFWP. That appearance put Turner in some impressive company-Coretta Scott King, Alexander Haig and Lynne Cheney, among others.
“They were awed by her,” Thalheimer recalls. “There was a genuineness about her. Her enthusiasm and commitment … she was speaking from the heart, and that strengthened her message. She inspires people to go after their dream.
“The Japanese culture is very stylized and strict, so it was important for them to meet that kind of person. Cathy epitomizes something important about American culture. She is so very determined; she’ll do whatever it takes (to succeed).”
Turner says she was equally moved by the experience, especially meeting a Japanese woman on the Bridge of Peace, symbolic of the bonding of the two groups.
“I loved doing that,” Turner says, “because when I was younger I didn’t have a lot of confidence. I was always afraid of being a nobody, and losing. If I lost, I was a nobody; if I won, I was a somebody. I had to learn how to overcome those barriers myself.”
Thalheimer says she also was impressed that Turner did not show up, do her bit, and take the money and run. “She could have done her presentation and left, but she stayed.”
Turner says it is easy to draw a parallel between her experience as an athlete and succeeding in the business world. It is her message of hard work, determination and focus that has made her popular in the corporate arena.
“The bottom line is, never say, ‘I can’t.’ When we say we can’t do something, we shut our own doors of opportunity,” Turner says. “We limit ourselves just by saying we can’t accomplish something, when, in fact, that-our attitude-may be our only obstacle.
“I had to overcome my fear of losing to look at racing in a positive way, and look forward to it. In business, you can look at something and say, ‘I can’t do that,’ or say, ‘That won’t happen to me, I’m not good enough.’ Or, you can look at it and say, ‘There’s a challenge, I’m going to go after this.’
“If your goals don’t seem impossible when you set them, they’re just not high enough.”
Turner tells her audiences simply, “If you can see it, you can be it.” And she has practiced what she preaches.
After her Olympic triumph in ’92, she envisioned operating a fitness center, and before you could say “free weights and treadmills,” Turner and her husband, Hilton veterinarian Timothy Bostley, opened Cathy Turner’s Empire Fitness. She closed the business last August, not because it was a failure, but because it got in the way of Cathy being Cathy.
“I was traveling so much,” she explains. “Basically, I was never there. I really believe that in order to make something really work, you have to have your heart in it and make it a full-time job.”
For Turner, with her plate so full, that presented an impossibility. “I’d go to the fitness center and I’d hear about problems instead of enjoying myself. I’d always go there dressed to work out and I would never get to work out. I just wasn’t enjoying it. I wanted to be on the other side of the desk.”
Her roles as inspirational speaker and small-business owner have kept Turner busy for the past eight years, but they are only two of many entries on her resume. In fact, Turner’s resume would be much quicker to read if it listed only those careers she hasn’t pursued. She is a songwriter, she has sung professionally, and she has done some acting and television commercials. She is taking piano lessons and coaches the Rochester Speed Skating Club.
In 1992, Turner went on a 26-city tour
with the Ice Capades, co-starring with U.S. Olympic figure skater Christopher Bowman. It paid her six figures, she says, and she was eager to sing and skate again in 1993.
“Dorothy Hamill took the show over near the end of our run. They wanted me for the following year, but in the summer (of 1993) they decided to do a theme show, Cinderella, and Dorothy would be Cinderella.
“I had just gotten married and I was looking forward to (the Ice Capades). In August, I started training for the ’94 Olympics.”
After winning a second gold medal in 1994, Turner weighed overtures to do a movie of her life, finally signing an option with Martin Sheen’s company, Symphony Pictures.
“They had six months-I think it was a six-month option-to come up with a story,” Turner recalls. “When I got the final script, it was nothing like I expected. They sensationalized my story so much that it wasn’t really my story anymore. So I had to refuse it.”
There are those who might question Turner’s sanity after she turned down an offer to let Hollywood tell her life story-a chance to be immortalized on film. But, Turner says, “it wasn’t really my story. They exaggerated everything. …
“But it wasn’t me as much as it was the other people in my life-it was my dad, my relationships, how those people were, what kind of life I was living in the fast lane. It was sensationalized so much that people would’ve gotten the wrong idea.
“They left out the empathy of what I really went through,” she says. “They missed the boat. They told my story in a sensational way instead of the drama of it. It was too superficial. So I just said, ‘Well, let’s forget this.’ It keeps popping up on a yearly basis, but it’s just something I haven’t pursued.”
Kreiter, her agent, says he has been talking for three or four months with a studio interested in Turner’s story. “Discussions are ongoing,” he says.
Is she excited at that prospect?
“I don’t really care,” Turner says. “But I think it would be good in that I think it would help a lot of people if they knew my story, for people to realize that things don’t just get handed to you.
“A, you have to work hard for things, and B, nothing’s impossible.”

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