Biography

Growing up in the tall forests and lush valleys of British Columbia’s lower mainland, Debbie Brill was always challenging herself to run faster and jump higher as a young athlete. Born in 1953 in Mission, Debbie was dominating the high jump in local sporting events by the time she was nine. Encouraged by her parents, who created homemade landing mats using fishnets and foam from a second-hand furniture store, she spent hours practicing on their farm. Developing a unique reverse jump technique that became known as the ‘Brill Bend,’ Debbie would approach the bar directly from the side and fling herself backwards up and over, landing on her back. Competing internationally for the first time, just ahead of the Olympic Games in 1968, at the age of 15, she was laughed at by crowds who had never seen the high jump performed this way. Undaunted, Debbie’s self-confidence grew as she refined her technique, and at the age of 16 she became the first North American woman to clear six feet. With similar approaches developed independently by American athletes Dick Fosbury and Bruce Quande, Debbie redefined what athletes could achieve in the high jump.
 
An 11-time national champion, Debbie broke the Canadian record in 1969 and has held the record consecutively since 1976, setting the current record of 1.98 metres in 1984, a record that stands to this day. Between 1968 and 1988, she represented Canada at three Olympic Games, two World Championships, four Commonwealth Games, and three Pan American Games. Achieving an outstanding combined total of 65 national and international championships, Debbie won Gold Medals at the Commonwealth Games in 1970 and 1982, the Pan American Games in 1971, and the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) World Cup in 1979. Ranked number one in the world when Canada joined an international boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, she lost the chance to compete for an Olympic medal at the height of her career. With characteristic integrity and intelligence, Debbie continued to challenge limiting assumptions about women in athletics every time she approached the bar, clearing 1.99 metres to set the world indoor high jump record in 1982, five months after giving birth to her first child. She did this at a time when there was no information or precedence about how to return to high level competition after childbirth; women simply did not do it. Childbirth meant the end of one’s career. A notion she felt required challenging.
 
Retiring from competition in 1988, Debbie never stopped looking for new opportunities to challenge herself. In 1999 she broke the World Master’s record for athletes over 45 years of age after jumping 1.76 metres, and in 2004 cleared 1.60 metres to set a new World Master’s record for athletes over 50. A lifelong advocate for gender equity and inclusivity in sport, Debbie worked as an athlete representative to help successfully campaign for the removal of women’s sex testing from IAAF competition in 1992. She has also served as a member of the Board of Directors for the BC Games Society, drawing on her experience as a homegrown sport hero to support aspiring young athletes in her home province. A bold innovator who defied convention to achieve unprecedented heights, Debbie Brill remains a Canadian sport trailblazer in a class of her own.