Twenty-five years on, here are 10 unforgettable moments from the 1994 Victoria Commonwealth Games:
RECONCILIATION — It is the buzzword of the current day. But Cathy Freeman brought it crashing home 25 years ago by carrying both the Aboriginal and Australian flags around Centennial Stadium after winning the women’s 200 and 400 metres, causing a firestorm of controversy back home. Six years later, Freeman was chosen to light the flame in the opening ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
FAREWELL — Victoria was Hong Kong’s final Commonwealth Games before the handover to China in 1997, the repercussions of which are still being felt today. Lawn bowler Kenneth Wallis and the badminton mixed team won Hong Kong’s final Games medals.
MANDELA’S CHILDREN — South Africa, banned since 1962 because of apartheid, returned to the Commonwealth Games and the new Rainbow Nation took its bows in Victoria. All-white South African lawn bowlers won the men’s and women’s fours gold medals and watched their new flag rise at Juan de Fuca. So too did 800-metre runner Hezekiel Sepeng at Centennial Stadium, becoming the first black athlete to win a Games medal for South Africa.
“I wanted to cry,” Sepeng said that day in Gordon Head. “When I took the victory lap with the new flag, it was something incredible.”
A scheduling conflict prevented Nelson Mandela from attending Victoria 1994, but his shadow loomed large over the Games. There were even two commemorative Games trading pins featuring the South African president.
THE SPLASH — The din was ear-splitting inside Saanich Commonwealth Place as the crowd rose as one to urge Aussie swimming legend Kieren Perkins to a world record in the 1,500-metre freestyle. A generation later, Ryan Cochrane trained in that pool and won two Olympic medals in the 1,500 metres.
THE DOVE — The tale of the Dove was a cautionary fable if there ever was one, and it still haunts. It was a precursor to the drug scandals that later engulfed the likes of Lance Armstrong, Barry Bonds and almost the entirety of the Russian sporting system. (Not that it was anything new: Consider East Germany’s athletes at Montreal in 1976 and our own Ben Johnson at Seoul in 1988.)
A runner of little notice, Horace Dove-Edwin of Sierra Leone, upset stars such as Frankie Fredericks and Bruny Surin to win the Victoria Games’ men’s 100-metre silver medal behind defending Olympic champion Linford Christie of England.
Dove-Edwin’s emotionally charged and disbelieving victory lap brought tears to fans’ eyes as he fell rolling to the track wrapped in his nation’s flag.
When it was reported Dove-Edwin didn’t march in the opening ceremony because Sierra Leone couldn’t fund team uniforms for the occasion, Islanders rallied to the cause and donated thousands of dollars to the team. It only made Dove-Edwin’s later expulsion from the Games for steroids all the more deflating.
DARING DANIEL — On his way back from Juan de Fuca Arena to the Athletes Village at UVic, following an 11th-place finish, Nigerian wrestler Daniel Igali leaned into the ear of his volunteer Games driver, Tom Murphy, and said he wanted to remain in Canada. Six years after hiding out in the Murphy’s basement, a grateful Igali placed the Canadian flag on the mat in Sydney and kissed it after winning gold for his new country at the 2000 Olympics.
PEDAL POWER — After winning Games gold, Canadian track cyclist Tanya Dubnicoff dismounted and spotted her mother amidst the throng at the Juan de Fuca Velodrome. Security tried to stop her, but she broke through it and jumped into the jammed grandstand to hug her mom.
DANNY BOY — Jimmy Webb, a bouncer who grew up on the hard streets of West Belfast, won the 71-kilo gold medal in a packed and sweltering Esquimalt Archie Browning Sport Centre during the boxing finals of the 1994 Games.
Northern Ireland team doctor Sean Donnelly snatched the microphone before the tape machine played the official anthem and delivered a wonderfully moving a cappella version of Danny Boy, which reduced Webb to tears.
PROMISE KEEPER — The last thing English swimmer Nick Gillingham told his dying father was that he would win gold in the Victoria Games in his honour. The Olympian lived up to his word in the 200-metre breaststroke. “Dad, I kept my promise,” he said.
In another touching familial tale, Michael Strange won the boxing gold medal for Canada in the 60-kilo class at Archie Browning. That medal is now embedded in the headstone of his late cousin Patrick Delaney, who died in an automobile crash just before Strange left for Victoria to compete in the Games.
LONG-DISTANCE ROMANCE — From Saanich Commonwealth Place to a trans-Pacific proposal. Aussie swimmer Karen Van Wirdum had just come down from the podium after winning a silver medal when she turned to the television cameras and asked boyfriend Robert Dunne to marry her. The startled Dunne was watching at home in Australia. The answer, by phone, was “Yes.”
