| Personal information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nationality | Canadian | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | May 20, 1956 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Height | 5 ft 2 in (1.57 m) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Weight | 104 lb (47 kg) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | Diving | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Coached by | Don Webb Jim Lambie | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Linda Cuthbert (born May 20, 1956) is a Canadian former diver and present sports director of Commonwealth Sport Canada since 2006, having also served as a technical official for several commonwealth games. During her diving career, Cuthbert won a bronze medal in each of the 1975 and 1979 Pan American Games platform diving events, as well as a gold medal in the 1978 Commonwealth Games 10 metre highboard event. Cuthbert began diving at age 10 and started to take it seriously in 1967, when she had a series of different coaches until settling with Don Webb, who became her permanent coach.
Her competitive career began in 14, when she moved away from her family to focus on training with her coach and first made the national team in 1971. She finished fourth at the 1974 British Commonwealth Games diving event, just missing out on bronze. During her employment with a bank, she would be permitted time off to train and would receive $600 annual training expenses from the Canadian Olympic Committee. She was one of four Canadian athletes who featured in the National Film Board of Canada 1979 documentary Going the Distance.
In 1980, she vocally opposed proposed boycotts of the 1980 Summer Olympics in relation to the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan, instead suggesting that athletes should turn their back on the soviet flag and not attend opening ceremonies in protest. She was involved in a diving accident in May 1980, when upon performing a somersault, lost her balance and hit her head on the springboard, falling unconscious into the pool. Although only suffering with a deep gash to the head and concussion, she missed out on making the Canadian 1980 Summer Olympics team. Just several months later in September 1980, Cuthbert announced her retirement from competitive diving, citing a loss of motivation and the continual problems of finding training facilities.
In 2003, Cuthbert established her company Breakthrough Performance and had previously been a managing consultant with the Canadian Olympic Centre. She has served on the board of directors of various Canadian sport and aquatic institutions and as of 2021, she chairs the Sport Committee of Commonwealth Sport Canada.