Wanda Allan Parsons will never forget the moment as both Olympic Stadium in Montreal and her body shook when the host team entered.
“It was unbelievable. You can’t describe the noise . . . that roar,” recalled the former Victoria archer.
Canadians have entered a stadium as Olympic hosts three times but only once in the Summer Games. Parsons was part of that moment at Montreal in 1976. The two-time Olympian also marched into the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for the 1984 Summer Games and now marches into the Victoria Sports Hall of Fame with the Class of 2017.
“I am shocked by this. It’s such an honour and makes you feel special,” said Parsons, now a quilter in Chase.
It all started when her brother Glenn found an old wooden bow in a ditch.
“We went to Woolco to buy some wooden arrows. So from the ditch to the Olympics,” said Parsons, a graduate of Claremont.
Headlining the Class of 2017, announced Thurday, is Olympian Diane Cummins. The lithe and superbly gifted runner was one of Canada’s greatest track athletes and held the 14-year national record for the women’s 800 metres of 1:58.39 from 2001 until Melissa Bishop finally eclipsed it in 2015. Cummins is one of only three Canadian females ever to run under two minutes in the 800 metres.
The native of South Africa, who settled in Victoria, ran to a silver medal and two bronzes in the Commonwealth Games and gold in the Pan Am Games. Cummins twice made the final at the world track and field championships. Her fifth place was the best performance by an athlete from the host country at the 2001 worlds in Edmonton and she was sixth at Paris in 2003.
The 43-year-old Cummins moved to Missoula, Montana, and is still active as a masters-age runner. Perhaps it’s only fitting that she is going into the Victoria Sports Hall in a Class of 2017 that includes the most prolific masters runner of all time. Maurice Tarrant only began running with the Prairie Inn Harriers in 1983 at age 52. He went on to set 70 Canadian and eight world records in various masters age-group categories. Tarrant is 87 and still churning those legs — and now all the way into the Victoria Sports Hall of Fame.
Paralympian Karen March will join Cummins, Tarrant and Parsons as the athletes to be enshrined during the induction ceremonies to take place Oct. 28 at the Westin Bear Mountain.
Also being inducted with the Class of 2017 are Alex Nelson and Michael O’Connor for their myriad roles in building sport on the Island; Rafael Melendez-Duke, an outstandingly swift international-level runner in his own right, being enshrined for his role as a legendary Island and international track official; the late Denny Boyd in the media category; and the 1967 Kennedy Cup USA-Mexico-Canada soccer champion Victoria O’Keefes in the team category.
The timing is uncanny for O’Connor, whose dad Jim and uncle Bill were both involved with the O’Keefes in soccer.
“When you look at all the great men and women who have been inducted into the Victoria Sports Hall, I feel humbled and blessed to be joining them,” said O’Connor.
The Victoria lawyer described himself as a “Clydesdale” athlete. But it’s in the builders category — from especially rugby then to the 1994 Commonwealth Games and to helping establish the Victoria Sports Hall — that he is being enshrined.
“I was delighted to give back, right up to the international level with Canada,” said O’Connor.
