RIP Randy Starkman

I am shocked and saddened to hear of Randy Starkman's passing today. He was my favourite sportswriter. He wrote about the Olympics for The Toronto Star.

I started this blog just under a year ago. I love the Olympics and wanted to write about it more without overwhelming my personal blog so I thought that this space could give me that avenue.

I have not written as much as I initially thought I would. There are numerous reasons for this, one of which is that Randy Starkman often gave me what I wanted to research and write about. I loved reading his Olympic blog and athlete profiles. Randy Starkman is the writer I wish I was. He wrote about amateur athletes and the Olympics. He attended twelve Olympic Games. His articles were the ones I loved most.

When my son was in Grade 5 (2006-2007), he participated in a Flat Stanley project. One of my favourite memories of Randy Starkman was of him taking a Flat Stanley to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics (like he had done in 2006). He took a Flat Stanley from my son's teacher's class. It must have been so great to be in her class that year and read about Flat Stanley's Olympics experience when he returned. You can read his pre-Olympic blog post here (link is now broken :-( ). I would have loved to have been a "Flat Stanley" and get the chance to experience the Olympics through Randy's eyes.

Adam van Koeverden wrote a blog post today about Randy. You can read it here. In it he says that Randy encouraged him to write more. I never met Randy, but I would like to think that if we had met and he could have seen my passion for the Olympics, he would have encouraged me to write more.

I am sad that my RSS feed to his blog will forever be quiet, but I will remember the impact he had on amateur sports in Canada and will hopefully use this memory to motivate myself to follow his lead and write more.