Michelle Therrien, once part of a distinctive three-woman announcing and interviewing team on Hippodrome de Montreal’s in-house TV broadcasts, has passed away at age 50.
The cause of death was lung cancer.
Therrien, a resident of Rosemere, Que., started in radio, but soon became a familiar face on Quebec television. She worked seven years for the sports channel, RDS, covering a variety of sports, including the Tour the France bicycle race, soccer, women’s hockey and roller hockey. She even co-hosted a fly-fishing show.
For more than a decade, she was a presenter on the French-language weather channel Météomedia. She subsequently became the public face and voice of auto dealer H. Grégoire, for whom she served as vice-president of marketing.
And for a brief while at the turn of the century, Therrien and fellow presenters Lucie Dufault and Claudine Douville brought a completely different look to Quebec’s racing broadcasts.
“In a world where female faces are still the exception, Montreal has three in regular rotation,” Trot Magazine noted in a feature story on the trio in January of 2000.
They’d been recruited at the instigation of then-president Jacques Brulotte, who felt the in-house show needed a female presence. Douville recommended Therrien, one of her co-workers at RDS.
The former model told Trot that she liked keeping busy at a variety of different activities.
“It’s not the money. After taxes, you don’t get to keep much,” Therrien said in the Trot feature. “I just like it. I used to go to Richelieu Park with my parents when I was small so I knew the racetrack environment. I’ve always liked horses and the gaming side appeals to me, too. There’s a bit of gambler in me.”
Funeral details have not yet been released.
Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the family and friends of Michelle Therrien.
(A Trot Insider exclusive by Paul Delean)