There haven’t been many, but score another fledgling victory by sports against the pandemic. Western Speedway will avoid its first dark summer when the Canada 200 takes place Sept. 6.
Western Canada’s oldest auto-racing track will continue an unbroken tradition of having racing every season since its opening in 1954. The glory years produced the likes of local drivers Billy Foster, the first Canadian to race the Indianapolis 500, and three-time Daytona 500 driver Roy Smith. Off-Island legends from Tom Sneva to Janet Guthrie to Bobby Allison have also graced the Langford oval over its 66 years.
The property on which Western Speedway sits was listed for sale in March with the deadline for bids June 18. Despite what the future holds for the site, there will be a race Sept. 6.
This year’s Canada 200 will, of course, be different than any other since the race began in 1972. Twenty-five of B.C.’s top drivers have entered and their teams will be limited to the driver and one crew member working in the pits and another in the grandstand as a spotter. No fans will be allowed onto the grounds but the race can be viewed live on CHEK-TV beginning at 7 p.m. The important thing is that it is happening at all. It will be the fourth live, organized sporting event on the Island after the shutdown in March. The first was the Sidney Velo Club’s cycling individual time-trial races, which began last month and run every Tuesday evening to Sept. 1. The next two were the Canada Life pro golf tournaments on Bear Mountain the past two weeks, a consolation for the cancelled Mackenzie Tour-PGA Tour Canada season.
A setback was Langford’s bid to the host the abbreviated pro soccer Canadian Premier League season at Westhills Stadium, which instead went to Charlottetown, P.E.I. But even that has its positives in that Pacific FC is at least playing somewhere. That’s not something lacrosse’s Victoria Shamrocks or Nanaimo Timbermen, baseball’s Victoria HarbourCats or football’s Westshore Rebels or V.I. Raiders can say after their 2020 seasons were cancelled due to COVID19. The Victoria Royals of the Western Hockey League must wait to at least Dec. 4 and the numerous Island-based Olympians to next summer for Tokyo 2020 plus one.
“It was quite a procedure to arrange to have the Canada 200 happen,” said Daryl Crocker, general manager of Western Speedway.
“It was long and thorough. The [B.C.] health authorities were good to deal with. Both sides want the race to happen but for it to be as safe as possible. There will be very strict protocols. This really didn’t truly come together until late Tuesday night. We are confident we can provide those strict safety protocols. But we know we have to prove it on Sept. 6.”
At the big-time pro levels, golf and auto racing were the first sports to return in North America through the PGA Tour and NASCAR and have now been followed by the team-sport NHL, NBA, MLB, MLS and CPL.
Western Speedway officials are happy just to finally be racing. The Canada 200 and the Daffodil Cup, the latter which began in 1961, are the two biggest annual races hosted at the Langford oval. The open-wheel Daffodil Cup, which had its 59th edition cancelled this year due to the pandemic, has featured Indianapolis 500 drivers Foster, Sneva, Guthrie, Art Pollard and Jim Malloy. The late-model stocks Canada 200 has featured Daytona 500 racers such as Smith and Allison and local legend and five-time champion Roy Haslam on Western Speedway’s venerable 4/10ths-mile oval.
During the down time this spring and summer, fans of the track were kept engaged online by watching their favourite Western Speedway drivers and cars, complete with actual colour schemes, in the virtual Horsepower for Hunger races in May and June which raised $20,000 for the Goldstream Food Bank. While that was a creative solution for a worthy cause, there is no substitute for the real thing. Island racing fans will get it Sept. 6 without having to leave their couches.
Crocker, meanwhile, was asked about the possible future of the site, which the operators of Western Speedway lease.
“We are planning for a 2021 season,” he said.
