She was the skinny, tiny bundle of energy who stole the nation's heart when she won the national figure skating championship in Thunder Bay in 1979 at the impossibly young age of 11.
Tracey Wainman was slender, smiley and sensational on the jumps she needed to become the youngest person ever to win the women's senior championship. She received her Mississauga Female Athlete of the Year Award from Dave Williams in a presentation that seemed to feature one big Tiger honouring a little one.
Full of pep and seemingly unaware of even the possibility of failure, Wainman was embraced by a nation nuts about figure skating and anxious to see her succeed.
She skated in a special gala in London, England with Olympic champions and at Madison Square Gardens in New York. She was the the toast of the skating world for a couple of glorious years.
Well, as we all know now, the seemingly boundless potential that Wainman displayed when she first burst on the scene was never fully realized.
Confidence problems surfaced at the 1981 Worlds and the young Mississaugan regressed to the point where she seemed afraid to try any jumps some nights. Frustrated and sapped, she quit at age 16 in 1984, the year when she was originally expected to challenge for Olympic Gold.
A brief, brave comeback at age 18 netted her another Canadian title in 1986 but as a more mature skater Wainman could never seem to recapture the magic in the public's eyes. She faded slowly from sight.
So, whatever happened to Tracey Wainman? The answer lies in a very good piece on the now 38-year-old Richmond Hill resident in the current Toronto Life magazine by Hugh Graham.
The warts-and-all treatment, titled Ice Storm, reveals a mature Wainman with much more perspective now on her sudden fame and the difficulties it caused.
She coaches very successfully and has shared her life for the past 13 years with Gregor Filipowski, a name you may remember from the Calgary Olympics. While the world was focussed on the Battle of the Brians for the gold medal, Filipowski was the surprise winner of the bronze for Poland.
The journeyman skater's unbridled joy as he leaped around the arena after surprising himself and the world is one of the treasured moments of those Games.
It's somehow fitting that Wainman, the skinny overachieving waif we remember for her million-watt smile and Filipowski, whose achievements seemed to stretch far beyond his talent, got together. Can you imagine the supper table conversation that must go on at their house about how to deal with the fragile psyches of young skaters?
Also featured in Toronto Life is another article, by petty criminal Andre Morrison (as told to David Hayes) that gives a chillingly different portrait of a Mississaugan who was singled out at a young age. Morrison, who grew up in Malton, was sent to jail at age 13.
He talks about living in a paper box on the roof of Westwood Secondary School, which he would have attended if he'd gotten that far, and sleeping in hallways in Malton apartment buildings.
A cautionary tale of an entirely different kind than Wainman's.