What could be a better combination than the retirement capital of Canada crossed with one of the cycling capitals of the country? The two-wheeled golden oldies will take over the streets of the South Island today through Sunday in the Canadian masters cycling championships.
“This is the ideal sport and the ideal demographic for this region,” said race director Jon Watkin.
He added these are the kind of Spandex warriors any region would covet as visitors — highly active people, many of them in the professions, who are staying in local hotels and eating at local restaurants.
Among them will be former Canadian international racer Scott Goguen, 57, the Calgarian who won a bronze medal in the 1990 Auckland Commonwealth Games, as he joins more than 200 masters rider from around the country racing a gamut of events this weekend.
That includes Barb Morris of Cumberland, who will later this year attempt to break the women’s 75-plus, one-hour track record on the 2015 Pan Am Games Velodrome in Milton, Ont. Also to watch this weekend is Clayton Hiltz, a masters Canadian champion out of the Victoria Wheelers, a club that was notable in the 1980s for producing Olympians.
“Some of these riders have been at pretty high levels and they take it almost as seriously at the current pros,” said race director Jon Watkin.
There is something for all of them at the national masters championships, which begin tonight with the individual time trial just outside the Victoria International Airport from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. The road race runs Saturday to and from Hans Helgesen Elementary School in Metchosin from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The criterium race Sunday will encircle the B.C. Legislature precinct from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and will include a bike expo and beer garden.
The criterium is essentially the continuation of the old Bastion Square race in downtown Victoria that began in 1992 and included the infamous Crash Corner with winners such as Olympic medallists Brian Walton and Alison Sydor, world champion Roland Green and Olympians Andreas Hestler, Erinne Willock and Gina Grain.
The event continued on from the national-level elites to, in recent years, as the B.C. criterium championships and now the Canadian masters championships, with a shift from Crash Corner around Bastion Square to the Hansard Hazard around the Legislature.
PEDAL POWER: The region’s reputation for hosting national cycling events, including the Canadian cyclo-cross championships the last two years at Layritz Park, will continue with Bear Mountain hosting the Canadian mountain-biking championships in 2025 and 2026.
