CLEVE DHEENSAW
Times Colonist
Next stop, Paris.
Two silver medals closed out the Island’s account at the 2023 Santiago Pan Am Games, which concluded Sunday in the Chilean capital, with Island or Island-based athletes winning 17 medals in total over the two weeks of the Games.
Squash player Nicole Bunyan of Victoria added silver in the women’s team event Sunday to her silver medal in mixed doubles from earlier in the Games.
Alycia Butterworth of Parksville, who as a youth athlete trained over a homemade steeplechase barrier on a cinder track with no water pit, won the silver medal in the women’s 3,000-metre steeplechase in 9:40.86, which was less than 1.50 seconds behind winner Belen Casetta of Argentina.
The Ballenas Secondary graduate described her hometown track of the time to the Times Colonist as “the worst cinder track anybody has ever seen — mostly dirt with grass growing through and rocks strewn about.” The Oceanside Track and Field Club athlete had to go to Nanaimo and Victoria to train on proper tracks and earned an NCAA Div. 1 scholarship with the University of Idaho Vandals.
After years of planning and diligent fundraising, a new $1.5-million track is expected to be installed next year in Parksville for use by the Oceanside Track and Field Club, Ballenas Secondary and the community.
A study in persistence and tenacity, Butterworth overcame her lack of facilities, and also a rash of injuries, to run for Canada in the Tokyo Olympics and got there largely self-funded and on holiday time from her job as a data scientist for TransLink.
Butterworth was part of the 44 Island or Island-based athletes on the 473-athlete Canadian team in Santiago who contributed to the 164 Canadian medals, as Canada placed third in the overall table behind the United States’ 286 medals and Brazil’s 205. Canada, however, was fourth in the internationally-used ranking standard of gold medals with 46 behind the United States’ 124, Brazil’s 66 and Mexico’s 52.
Canadian athletes earned Olympic berths in 12 events for the 2024 Paris Olympics Games, including silver-medallist Sanoa Dempfle-Olin of Tofino as the first Canadian surfer to ever qualify for the Olympics.
The two Island gold medallists in Santiago were world-champion Ethan Katzberg of Nanaimo in the men’s hammer throw and the North Cowichan-based Canadian women’s rowing eight.
Selected to carry the Canadian flag in the closing ceremony Sunday were gold-medallists Katie Vincent, a canoe paddler from Ontario, and break-dancer Philip Kim of Vancouver, better known as Phil Wizard.
“It’s now time to carry this momentum into Paris next summer,” Canadian Olympic Committee chief sports officer Eric Myles said in a statement.
The Island’s total of 17 medals matched the 17 won by Islanders at the last Pan Am Games in 2019 at Lima, Peru. The 2027 Pan Am Games are in Barranquilla, Colombia, which will point to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
