Michel Vaillancourt
Canadian equestrian
Michel Vaillancourt (born July 26, 1954) is a Canadian show jumper who won an individual silver medal at the 1976 Olympics. He tied for second place with Debbie Johnsey and François Mathy, but won the silver in a jump-off. Vaillancourt finished in fifth place with the Canadian team.
Vaillancourt started training in horse riding aged 12, encouraged by his father, an equestrian coach who died in a horse riding accident in 1971. At his first international competition, Vaillancourt won a team bronze medal at the 1975 Pan American Games. He won a silver team medal at the next Games in 1979. Vaillancourt missed the 1980 Olympics in Moscow that were boycotted by Canada, and competed at the Alternate Olympics, winning a team gold medal. After retiring from competitions he worked as a course designer and coach, supervising the Canadian equestrian team at the 1994 and 1998 Olympics. He was inducted into the Jump Canada Hall of Fame in 2009.
“Michel Vaillancourt” enters the record as canadian equestrian. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Michel, Vaillancourt and Canadian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Michel Vaillancourt” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Michel, Vaillancourt and Canadian provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 12, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6836596. VIAF identifies the subject as 317274619. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1954, 1976, 1971 and 1975.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Michel Vaillancourt”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Michel Vaillancourt primary sources, Michel Vaillancourt archive and Michel research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Michel Vaillancourt”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Michel Vaillancourt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.