Class of 2017 set to enter Victoria Sports Hall

Cummins among Class of 2017 to be inducted tonight

All the memories will come flooding back tonight for former 800-metre great Diane Cummins when she is enshrined into the Victoria Sports Hall of Fame with the Class of 2017 during the induction ceremonies in the Westin Bear Mountain ballroom.

“You remember the special moments like qualifying for the 2004 Athens Olympics at the Canadian trials held on my hometown Centennial Stadium track and realizing a dream I had since I was 10 years old . . . or looking up and finding my dad in the stands at Manchester after medalling at the [2002] Commonwealth Games,” said Cummins.

“There are a lot great athletes in the Victoria Sports Hall and to even think I’m on par with them is kind of scary.”

Joining Cummins tonight in the athletes category of the Class of 2017 is Montreal 1976 and Los Angeles 1984 two-time Olympic archer Wanda Allan Parsons, Paralympian Karen March and prolific runner Maurice Tarrant, who set 70 Canadian and eight world records in masters age-group categories.

Going into the builders’ category are Alex Nelson for his lifetime of commitment to First Nations sport development and Michael O’Connor for his yeoman involvement with local and national rugby, the 1994 Commonwealth Games and in establishing the Victoria Sports Hall. Joining them in the builders’ category will be legendary Island track official Rafael-Melendez Duke, who was also a world-class sprinter.

The 1967 Kennedy Cup USAMexico-Canada soccer champion Victoria O’Keefes are being enshrined in the team category. The late Victoria Times sportswriter Denny Boyd, who went onto become the famed abouttown columnist for the Vancouver Sun, is being inducted in the media category.

Cummins recalls with fondness her time as one of Canada’s most brilliant track athletes as she 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 was 10-time Canadian women’s 800-metre champion.

“It speaks to my longevity in the sport. I was proud to be the best in Canada for that length of time,” said Cummins, who retired three years ago at age 40.

The native of South Africa came to Victoria to live because of its high-level training environment and said local coaches Brent Fougner and Wynn Gmitroski were “crucial in my development.”

So lithe and nimble, Cummins ran to the semifinals of the 2004 Athens Olympics and to a silver medal and two bronzes in the Commonwealth Games and gold in the Pan Am Games. She twice made the final at the world track and field championships. Cummins’ fifth place was the best performance by an athlete from the host country in any event at the 2001 worlds in Edmonton and she was sixth at the worlds in Paris in 2003.

Now the head coach of the Mountain West Youth Track Club, Cummins coaches cross-country and track at Big Sky High School in Missoula, Montana. She is engaged to Toby English and said she “enjoys finally being able to have a couple of glasses of wine with dinner.”

Cummins, however, finds retirement from elite athletics “bittersweet” because she was still running times that would have qualified her for the 2016 Rio Olympics and 2017 world championships in London.

World-class athletes are seldom satisfied. That’s what makes them who they are. Cummins is one of only three Canadian females ever to run under two minutes in the 800 metres but believes she could have reached the rarefied time of 1:56.00 and confesses to being “frustrated at not reaching my potential.”

But few would argue against Cummins’ greatness in Canadian track or her status as an Island sporting legend.

After her induction tonight into the Victoria Sports Hall of Fame, Cummins plans to celebrate with a run Sunday morning around Elk-Beaver lakes.

“For posterity,” she said.