Next stop for Whitfield, national Sports Hall of Fame
Former Olympian to be inducted tonight
Simon Whitfield now restricts his sporting activities to paddle boarding, pick-up soccer and coaching his daughters’ soccer and cross-country teams at Margaret Jenkins Elementary School.
But he can walk into Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre and B.C. Place and see images of his past exploits hanging from the walls as a member of both the Victoria and B.C. sports halls of fame.
The former triathlon great will be able to do the same in Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in Calgary as he completes the Hall of Fame trifecta with the biggest honour of all.
Whitfield will be enshrined tonight during the induction ceremonies for the Class of 2017, which also includes Stanley Cupchampion Lanny McDonald, lacrosse legend Gaylord Powless, Masters golf champion Mike Weir, two-time Olympic wrestling-medallist Carol Huynh, Winter Olympics multi-medallist speed-skater Cindy Klassen and the Edmonton Grads women’s basketball dynasty.
Being enshrined with the Class of 2017 in the builders category are Dr. Robert W. Jackson, founder of the Paralympics movement in Canada, and Dr. Charles Tator, the neurosurgeon who greatly advanced knowledge of concussions.
Whitfield is just the second triathlete to be inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall after fellow-Victorian and three-time Ironman Hawaii world champion Peter Reid.
“It’s going to be touching to see my face up there with all the past great Canadian athletes I idolized,” said Whitfield, who joins the likes of Gretzky, Orr and Howe in the Canadian sports hall.
Like many former athletes, however, Whitfield said he misses training with a firm goal in sight, and that indescribable jolt one gets when that training leads to the desired results. The career results were certainly desirable for Whitfield, who won gold and silver medals at the 2000 Sydney and 2008 Beijing Olympics, respectively, and gold at the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games.
“You miss the mastery of it . . . of being able to master something,” said Whitfield, who was Canada’s opening-ceremony flagbearer for the 2012 London Olympics.
“I trained and competed in such an obsessive manner. I was always focused on the next competition.”
That sort of sporting drive is hard to step away from cold. But at some point, your body will begin betraying you with age, and Whitfield retired following his fourth Olympic Games in 2012 at London.
There is another thing Whitfield, 42, said he misses about triathlon: “It’s a unique existence and I miss being outside.”
He tries to still get his fill of it as a paddleboard instructor in the waters around Victoria and on Island pitches in his beloved pick-up soccer games with a group of friends he has played with for several years.
Whitfield is learning sport never stops and can be for life, even when the cheering stops.
This is the seventh consecutive year in which Island athletes have been inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame. Paralympics multi-medallist swimmers Stephanie Dixon and Michael Edgson were enshrined in 2016 and 2015, respectively, rugby legend and four-time World Cup player Gareth Rees in 2014 and three-time women’s mountain biking world champion and 1996 Atlanta Olympics silver-medallist Alison Sydor in 2013. Also inducted in 2013 were 1992 Barcelona Olympics double goldmedallist rowers Brenda Taylor, Jessica Monroe-Gonin and Kirsten Barnes. Jennifer Walinga, injured before the Barcelona finals, was inducted with the group. Olympic gold-and silvermedallist rower Derek Porter was enshrined in 2012 and Reid in 2011 along with Winter Paralympics 10-time medallist skier Lauren Woolstencroft.