Former SFU athlete Debbie Brill inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame

A former Simon Fraser University high-jumper who created the ‘Brill Bend’ technique and whose Canadian high-jump record has remained untouched for four decades is being inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame.

Debbie Brill will receive the Order of Sport as a trailblazer at a ceremony Oct. 23 in Gatineau, Que.  

“I never thought of myself as (a trailblazer),” says Brill, who grew up as one of five kids on a farm in Aldergrove. “I didn’t go out trying to shake up the world. I was just a skinny, shy, little farm girl. I didn’t have coach and nobody to show me how to do stuff. I just figured it out myself.”

Brill, who attended SFU in 1976 and is a member of SFU’s Sports Hall of Fame, learned to high jump on a homemade crash-pad that her father built from bits of furniture foam and fishing nets. She developed a unique reverse jump technique that became known as the Brill Bend. It was a natural extension of the classic scissor technique, she explains, laying her back level allowed her to raise her hips higher. At age 16, she became the first North American woman to clear six feet. 

Her technique is similar to the “Fosbury Flop” that was developed independently at the same time in the United States and helped Dick Fosbury capture gold in the 1968 Olympics. When she first began to compete using the Brill Bend, there was talk about banning the technique due to fear that athletes would injure themselves. 

Brill won gold at the 1970 Commonwealth Games and the 1971 Pan American Games. She competed at the 1972 and 1976 Olympics and was ranked No. 1 in the world at the time of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, which Canada boycotted in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.  

“Even though I was a very shy kid, I wasn’t afraid to push the norms,” Brill says. “When it was assumed that I would retire at 18 or 19, my question was: Why? I like this! When it seemed that the only focus is to do this because you get gold medals for your country. My question was: Why? That seems a ridiculous thing to spend one’s time doing. But if I’m doing it to better know myself and to push myself into something that is difficult and unknown territory – then that’s a good reason.”

An 11-time national champion, she set the indoor world record of 1.99 metres in 1982, five months after the birth of her first child. At the time, women did not return to high-level competition after childbirth.  

“It was such a male-dominated sport and there were so many expectations of girls and women that that just pissed me off,” Brill says. “I constantly felt like, ‘I’ll show you. You don’t get to tell me what I’m going to do.’ It was this constant unspoken battle.”

Her Canadian high-jump record still stands more than 42 years after it was set. Throughout her career, Brill won more than 65 national and international meets. She was inducted into SFU’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1986. 

Brill retired from competition in 1988. She set world master’s records in 1999 (clearing 1.76 metres at 45) and in 2004 (clearing 1.60 metres at 50).

A lifelong advocate for gender equity and inclusivity, she worked to successfully remove women’s sex testing from IAAF competition in 1992. She also served on the board of the B.C. Games Society.