Susan Gardiner started playing water polo at age 11 and by 16 she was on the national junior team. Three years later she made the senior squad. She was a member of the 2000 Olympic team as well as the 2001 and 2003 world championship teams and the 2002 World Cup squad.
The Sydney Games were bittersweet for Gardiner. The Canadians were gold medal contenders but placed fifth. Gardiner, who was a late addition to the team, spent most of the time on the bench. "It's hard to compare to the last time," said Gardiner, a biology student at UBC. "In Sydney, I didn't play and I didn't feel part of the team. Now that's not the case. I'm more of a contributor and the whole team is much more unified."
She played soccer and basketball as a child before following her brother James into water polo. She played for the North Vancouver Cruisers summer swim club and later Pacific Storm, the Vancouver-based high performance club.
"The swimming came so natural with me, the rest of it wasn't that far behind, because I had the ability to play these other sports. It was easy to transfer game sense into the water," said Gardiner who played pro in Italy after the Sydney Olympics in the Italian Division 1 League.
