Photo: Olympic gold-medallist figure skater Katarina Witt poses with a 1984 promotional poster. The Bosnian city of Sarajevo marked the 20th anniversary of the Olympics, hoping to promote the city again as a winter sports centre (Hidajet Delic/AP).

Twenty years ago on Valentine's Day, Canada's love affair with speed skating bloomed.

On a outdoor ice oval in the Bosnian town of Sarajevo, under brooding skies and through the grimy smog of the coal-fired town, Gaetan Boucher became an Olympic hero.

Boucher, then 25, believed himself indomitable as he went to the line for the 1,000-metre race to win the first of two gold medals there. He also won gold at 1,500 metres and bronze at 500 metres in Sarajevo. He had won a silver at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics. Boucher's success catapulted Canada to a new level in speed skating and paved the way for succeeding generations of world beaters that included Susan Auch, Catriona Le May Doan and Jeremy Wotherspoon in long track and Annie Perreault and Marc Gagnon in short track.

"Gaetan was Canada's most decorated Olympian with four individual medals until another speed skater [Gagnon] took over in Salt Lake City," said Jean Dupré, the director general of Speed Skating Canada. Gagnon wound up with three golds and two bronzes over three Olympic Games.

But Boucher's Sarajevo performance, which will be honoured today in Ste Foy, Que., at the skating oval named for him, remains a milestone in Canadian Olympic lore. He was Canada's flag bearer at those Games and a real leader despite any pressures that job might entail.

His 1,000-metre gold was the first Winter Olympics gold won by a Canadian man in individual competition, and the entire Canadian hockey team stood around the Sarajevo ice ring to cheer him. The victory was all the more inspiring because only 11 months before the Games, Boucher had broken an ankle colliding with the boards in short-track training.

"I remember a feeling of overall confidence, that I would not fail," Boucher said in an interview this week. "I was skating so well the months before. I'd competed against everyone who had a chance to win and had beaten them."

The injury had been a key to victory. For years, Boucher had been burning the candle at both ends. A hockey player until he was 17, he took up skating to improve his game. He would skate long-track and short-track seasons, giving himself only a couple of weeks off. The forced layoff because of ankle surgery restored his batteries, Boucher said.

"I did weights, I didn't let the rest of the muscles get weak, and when I came back, my Russian rival, Sergei Khlebnikov, doubted I had ever broken the ankle. I had to show him where they put the screws in to hold it together. I had the respect of the Russian and that meant a lot to me." Speed skating has boomed since Boucher retired after his fourth Olympic appearance at the Calgary Games in 1988. With the world-class oval plant there and support services, today's athletes have it easier.

Today, Boucher is a product developer with Bauer Nike, working on in-line and recreational skates. Boucher and wife Karin, a former German speed skater, have four children.