Biography

George Genereux was a trapshooting prodigy who took the world by storm during the 1950s. At the age of 13, he won his first major competition in Winnipeg and went on to take three consecutive Manitoba-Saskatchewan junior championship titles. In 1951, Genereux became the first Canadian to win a major competition at the Grand American shoot in Vandalia, Ohio, when he claimed the North America Junior Championship. He then returned home to Saskatchewan and easily took the provincial title. In 1952, at the age of 17, Genereux went abroad to represent Canada in the world's top trapshooting competitions. He tied for second in the Clay Pigeon event at the world championships in Oslo. He then proceeded to the Olympics in Helsinki where he claimed the gold medal, Canada's only one that year. Upon his return to Canada, Genereux was awarded the Lou Marsh Trophy as the nation's outstanding athlete of the year. With Olympic gold and world silver to his credit, the young champion reached the pinnacle of his career while still in high school. Only an incessant case of rheumatoid arthritis, which had afflicted him since the age of 16, managed to force the young champion out of competition for good. Though his brilliant athletic career was cut short, Genereux earned his medical degree from McGill and went on to become a prominent diagnostic radiologist.