Nikola Girke, BHK 1999, studied health and fitness during her undergraduate years and played for the UBC Women’s Rugby team, and was recognized for her academic and athletic success as an Academic All-Canadian student in 2000. However, despite Nikola’s achievements as a varsity athlete in rugby, it was sailing that was her true passion — and had been since she was a little girl. Nikola started sailing at age 8, began racing at age 12, and became a windsurfer at age 16. During her years at UBC, she had the distinction of being Canada’s three-time Youth Sailing champion and Laser 2 Sailing Women’s World champion. After her graduation from UBC, Nikola started to train, compete, and pursue her dreams as an Olympic athlete.
In 2004, Nikola competed at the Athens Olympic Games in a two-woman 470 class Canadian sailboat to 13th place. One set of Olympic Games wasn’t enough for Nikola. In 2005, when it was announced that windsurfing would be an Olympic event, she switched over to her true passion and was the only windsurfing Canadian athlete to qualify for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In 2012, Nikola again qualified for and represented Canada in windsurfing at the London Games, finishing 10th, and recording the country’s best-ever Olympic result in the event.
When windsurfing was nixed from the 2016 Games she switched back to sailing in the first co-ed Nacra 17 Class, racing in a devilishly tricky two-person catamaran. And 2016 was supposed to be the end of it. “After Rio I thought that was it for me,” said Girke. “And Rio ended abruptly. My teammate got sick, and so there goes the Olympics.”
Her blissful retirement, however, ended when her true love, windsurfing, was added back into the Olympic program. “The opportunity came along in 2019 with windsurfing again, and I was like, why not?” she said. “It seemed like it would be an opportunity to finish my Olympic career on my terms and in a healthy state of mind.”
In January 2020, she returned to racing RS:X in a major international competition and placed fourth at the World Cup stop in Miami. That result secured an Olympic spot for Canada in the RS:X for Tokyo 2020, and Girke is now set to accomplish something few in the world have ever done: compete in her fifth Olympic Games.
Now an experienced five-time Olympic athlete and the top female windsurfer in Canada, Nikola currently applies her athletic experiences as an executive coach, guiding individuals towards the achievement of their goals at Own Your Podium. Nikola also enjoys a variety of hobbies other than sailing, including surfing, biking, cross-country skiing, and gardening; and advocates for the accessibility of sport for kids and the empowerment of girls through sport with organizations such as Fast and Female, KidSport, and the 60 Minutes Kids’ Club.
