Bobbie Rosenfeld Award

The Bobbie Rosenfeld Award is an annual award given to Canada's female athlete of the year. The sports writers of the Canadian Press (CP) first conducted a poll to determine the nation's top female in 1933, naming golfer Ada Mackenzie the winner. The CP formalized the poll into an award in 1978, presenting their winner with a plaque. It was named after Bobbie Rosenfeld, an all-around athlete and Olympic track and field champion whom the news organization had named its top athlete of the half-century in 1950. The award is separate from the Lou Marsh Trophy, in which a select panel of sports writers vote for their top overall athlete.

The poll was suspended for four years during the Second World War after the CP decided it could not name a sporting "hero" at a time when Canadian soldiers were fighting in Europe.Figure skater Barbara Ann Scott was the first woman to lead the poll three times, accomplishing the feat in consecutive years between 1946 and 1948. That total was matched by speed skater Catriona Le May Doan in 2002. Golfer Marlene Streit finished top of the poll the most times, winning on five occasions between 1952 and 1963.

Swimmer Penny Oleksiak is the most recent winner. During the 2016 Summer Olympics, she became the first Canadian to win four medals in the same Summer Games and the country's youngest Olympic champion, with a gold in the 100 m freestyle, a silver in the 100 m butterfly, and two bronzes in the women's freestyle relays (4×100 m and 4×200 m).

The CP first voted on a female athlete of the year in 1933, one year after it inaugurated a poll that became the Lionel Conacher Award for the nation's top male athlete. The poll is separate from the previously existing Velma Springstead Trophy, which also names a female athlete of the year and was first presented by the Women's Amateur Athletic Federation of Canada in 1932.

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