Lionel Conacher Award

The sports writers of the Canadian Press (CP) first conducted a poll to determine the nation's top athlete, of either gender, in 1932.

The poll was suspended for four years during the Second World War after the CP decided it could not name a sporting "hero" at a time when Canadian soldiers were fighting in Europe.

[4] Hockey Hall of Famer Wayne Gretzky has won the most Lionel Conacher Awards, finishing top of the poll six times in the 1980s, and in 1999 was named the Canadian Press Athlete of the Century.

Golfer Ross Somerville won the inaugural poll after becoming the first Canadian to win the United States Amateur Championship.

In 2001 golfer Mike Weir defeated hockey player Joe Sakic by two points in one of the closest votes in the award's history.

Individual sport winners include weightlifter Doug Hepburn in 1953,[12] figure skater Kurt Browning in 1990 and 1991,[13] and most recently, gymnast Kyle Shewfelt in 2004.

A football player in his mid thirties is seen running toward the camera with a ball tucked under his left arm. He balding, and wearing a dark coloured uniform with the words "Crosse and Blackwell Chefs" on his chest.
Named Canada's male athlete of the half-century in 1950, Lionel Conacher won both the Grey Cup and Stanley Cup during his career as well as championships in baseball, lacrosse and boxing.
A man is carried on the shoulders of two other men. He is in a white shirt and shorts with a stylized maple leaf logo above the letters "CAN", while the two men carrying him, one black the other white, are in white long-sleeve shirts and full-length track pants
Phil Edwards (left) won in 1936.