Patten walks into the Hall of Fame
Nanci Patten is a tour de force in athletics.
“Sports is just my life,” said the 64-year-old Cambridge resident.
And she’s not exaggerating. Patten was a figure skater from the age of five until 19. She was a track and field star in high school. And she played on the women’s hockey and volleyball team and ran cross-country while attending the University of Toronto.
She competed in gymnastics, tennis and badminton. She was even a high diver at one time. Oh, and she’s also a sailing and canoe instructor.
“I’ve just been really active,” she said.
But her best sport is race walking.
The Don Mills native has torn up tracks and ruled roads for some 40 years and has the medals and national records to show for it.
Earlier this month, Patten picked up another honour by being one of four athletes inducted into the Canadian Masters Athletics Hall of Fame. Masters sports are for men and women 35 and older.
The nod is nice for Patten, who is also a member of the Ontario masters hall.
But it’s the people, travel and competition that keeps her moving in events around the world. She’s made it through 184 races — and counting — in places such as Italy, Poland, Australia and Puerto Rico, among others.
She has set 65 Canadian masters age-group records along the way. Twenty are still standing.
“It’s a beautiful sport,” Patten said of race walking. “That’s what I like about it. It’s very technical. It uses all of your muscle groups like cross-country skiing or swimming. Everything has to be working in synchronization.”
It was brother-in-law Glenn Sweazey who turned her on to the sport about 40 years back. Eight months later, she headed to the national finals and set a Canadian record.
Events range from 1,500 metres to 50 kilometres in race walking. And that appeals to Patten, who has also competed in hurdles and steeplechase.
“I love the people, fun, camaraderie and the hard training,” she said. “I love to train just as much as I love to race.”
She’s an avid runner, too. Taming the trails around Galt is one of the reasons the new grandmother retired to Cambridge after years of managing graphic-design departments at different companies while living in Mississauga.
Of all the records she set, a national mark at a 20-kilometre-walk race hugging the coast along the Adriatic Sea in Italy stands out.
More may be on the way. Patten turns 65 in July and that means she’ll be moving up to compete in the 65-69 age group on the masters circuit.
And she has no plans of slowing down.
“I hope I die running a race somewhere,” she said.