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The shrine may be virtual, but the achievements of five sport champions and two builders who will be installed in Canada's Sports Hall of Fame are very real.
Former world heavyweight boxing champion Lennox Lewis, the 4-x-100 relay track team that shocked everyone but themselves in upsetting the Americans on their home turf at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, swimming wunderkind Nancy Garapick, speed skating's short-track legend Marc Gagnon and hockey's Steve Yzerman will take their places as athletes. Figure skating's David Dore, who performed the miracle of creating a self-sustaining amateur sport in Canada, and baseball's Pat Gillick, who helped mould the Toronto Blue Jays into World Series champs, will join them on the podium for induction as builders.
The formal induction is set for Nov. 5 at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in Toronto. The Hall of Fame and its 499 members don't have a museum-style headquarters to display their relics. The old Hall, which was at Exhibition Place in Toronto, closed its doors in 2006 after 52 years. Some of the historic artifacts are still stored on the Exhibition grounds at the Stanley Barracks, while some go into display cases in Canada's airports.
Mainly Canada's sports lore comes to life on the Internet, where Canadians can get an interactive handle on their sporting history and view videos and interviews of the greats.
The Canadian men's 4x100 metre relay team celebrate after winning the gold medal at the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta on Aug. 3, 1996. Seen from left to right are Robert Esmie, Bruny Surin, Donovan Bailey and Glenroy Gilbert. (Denis Paquin/AP)
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The modern technology approach suits sprinter Donovan Bailey just fine. Static displays don't turn the crank of the man who ran the baton over the finish line at Atlanta in 1996, finishing off the work of Bruny Surin, Glenroy Gilbert and Robert Esmie and Carlton Chambers, who shared the leadoff duties. It doesn't bother him that the Olympic track where he and his teammates made history was torn up and sold, scrap by scrap, to recoup costs at the end of the Games.
"The fact we're in a technological age, where we can always watch the race, and see the photos … so much is at our disposal now for my kids to watch it as if it was happening today," Bailey said in an interview from Arizona, where he is playing in a celebrity golf tournament.
Bailey, who set a world record of 9.84 seconds to take gold in the 100 metres at the same Games, says the 1996 relay squad could be considered Canada's greatest team in history.
"Every time people talk of the best team, they think it's Canada, it must be hockey. … But from 1994 to 1998, we were the fastest team on the planet, through Commonwealth Games, world championships, Olympics, Goodwill Games. We were the best in a sport where there are 200 countries competing. Hockey, on a good day, maybe only 20 countries have teams. At the end of the day, we beat the very best, and we beat the Americans at home. The results are there."
The famous baton, he believes, was kept by Esmie. "Robert was the youngest. We wanted Robert and Carlton to have something to remember it and we wanted Canada to stay dominant."
The 1996 team was inducted into the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame in 2004.
Garapick won two backstroke bronze medals in 1976 in the Montreal Olympic pool. Justifiably, the bronzes are as good as gold. The only women who could beat the 14-year-old from Halifax over the 100-metre and 200-metre distances were products of the drug-fuelled East German team. Swimming World magazine considered Garapick's bronzes as good as gold. The magazine published its own list of revised results for the Montreal Games after the exposure of East Germany's treachery.
Garapick set the swim world abuzz from the time she was 13 and rewrote the 200-metre backstroke world record. In 1975, she shared Canadian athlete-of-the-year honours with pentathlete Diane Jones Konihowski. Like Konihowski, she was denied a shot at Olympic victory in her prime when the Canadian team boycotted the Moscow Olympics in 1980. In a decade on the national team, Garapick won 14 Canadian titles and 42 national medals in all.
Gagnon was the dominant short-track speed skater of the 1990s and into 2002. Until Cindy Klassen came along, he was Canada's most decorated Olympian, with three gold medals and two bronze over three Games. His tour de force was Salt Lake in 2002, where he earned gold in both the 500 and 1,500 and helped the relay team to bronze. He'd earlier won a gold with the relay at Nagano in 1998 and a 1,000 metres solo bronze at Lillehammer in 1994.
At the world championships, Gagnon shone from 1993 to 2001, collecting an incredible eight gold medals, seven silvers and three bronze.
Lewis's path to the world boxing championship was long and arduous. He won gold at the world junior championship in 1983 and finished fifth in the Los Angeles Summer Olympics the next year. Four years later in Seoul, Lewis knocked out Riddick Bowe and won the gold medal in the super-heavyweight division to bring Canada Olympic gold, and help ease the national angst over the sprinting steroid controversy.
As a professional, Lewis collected the British and Commonwealth heavyweight titles, kayoed Canada's Donovan (Razor) Ruddick to capture the World Boxing Council title. After losing the title to Oliver McCall, he was back to win it twice more, against Shannon Briggs and Evander Holyfield, and scored an eighth-round knockout over Mike Tyson in defending it. His record at retirement in 2004: 41 wins, including 32 knockouts, two losses and one draw. Though his home base as a pro was England, the Hall's selectors noted that most professional athletes wind up leaving Canada to set up shop in a more conducive environment. Lewis's family stayed based in the Kitchener, Ont., area and he came back regularly.
Yzerman is a career Detroit Red Wings player. Their first pick and fourth overall in the 1983 NHL draft, he became their youngest captain in the 1986-87 season and a vital part of their offence until his retirement in 2006. He now a club vice-president and a key management figure in Hockey Canada. He left the playing ranks standing sixth in career NHL scoring and eighth in regular-season goals.
His Team Canada playing service includes a bronze medal with the 1983 world junior team, three world tournaments, the 1996 World Cup team and two Olympic teams. As a Red Wing he stands second to Gordie Howe in every major offensive category except assists, where his 1,063 tops Howe's 1,020.
Recognition in the builder category was well deserved by Dore and Gillick.
In almost 17 years as the Canadian Figure Skating Association president and director, David Dore reinvented Canadian skating. He built the national team program, developed successful marketing that attracted major sponsors and television contracts and created an Athletic Trust, which has financed more than 5,000 skaters to a total of $15-million over the past 20 years. Under Dore's leadership, Skate Canada's assets have grown from $285,000 in 1980 to $17-million, and annual revenues have grown by 400 per cent.
In Toronto, baseball fans know Pat Gillick as the general manager who built their beloved Blue Jays from also-rans to five-time division winners and two-time World Series champions. A lifetime baseball man, he climbed through the ranks from Houston's director of scouting to his stay in Toronto and general manager in Baltimore, Seattle and, currently, Philadelphia. A member of Canada's Baseball Hall of Fame, he was major-league baseball's executive of the year in 2001.
The Hall's election committee is chaired by Olympic gold medal rower Roger Jackson. Members of the selection committee are Sylvie Bigras (Canadian Olympic Committee), Ron Bremner (former Calgary Flames president), Robin Brown (CBC Radio), James Christie (The Globe and Mail), François Godbout (former Tennis Canada president), sport historian William Humber (Seneca College), Bruce Kidd (University of Toronto), Wendy Long (Vancouver freelance writer), Mary Ormsby (Toronto Star), Gordie Sutherland (Halifax Herald), Jim Taylor (Vancouver freelance writer) and broadcaster Brian Williams (CTV).
