From the everything old is new again file, the Global Relay Gastown Grand Prix Presented by Allstream is demonstrating how reaching into the archive can be an inexpensive way to promote the future.
Broadcasts of the 1988 Gastown Grand Prix and 1993 Gastown Grand Prix are now on YouTube, offering cycling aficionados a chance to experience it again for the first time.
The 1988 men’s race, billed as the Coors XVI Annual Gastown Grand Prix, features North Delta’s Brian Walton overcoming flu to win.
His 7-Eleven teammate Scott McKinley was second. Bruce Spicer beat Alex Stieda in the race for third place.
Stieda, who had two Gastown wins to his credit, gave a guided tour of the race on the Ted Reynolds-voiced broadcast, which featured an appearance by Canadian Olympic coach Ron Hayman.
The 1993 women’s race, with play-by-play from Rob Faulds, featured world road cycling champion Marianne Berglund of Sweden, a first and only for Gastown. Berglund beat Team Kahlua, a quartet that included Sara Neil, Lesley Tomlinson, Sue Palmer and Clara Hughes.
Hughes went on to be a cycling and speedskating Olympian.
She ended her Winter Olympics career at the Richmond Olympic Oval in 2010 and donated her winnings to the Downtown Eastside’s Take a Hike Foundation.
The July 11 Gastown Grand Prix is the marquee event of the July 6-16 B.C. Superweek racing series.
Find these gems on www.youtube.com/user/GastownGrandPrix.
Real estate goals
The Vancouver Whitecaps wore arbutus brown (with sky-blue trim) as the Colorado Rapids went down on June 16.
Mysterious, media-shy owner Greg Kerfoot was deeply involved in creating the club’s Major League Soccer logo two years ago.
The arbutus-brown third uniform might bear his fingerprints, too.
Kerfoot’s Stearman Beach house in West Vancouver is in arbutus country, and it can be yours for $9.998 million.
The 14-year-old house, listed by real estate agent Jason Soprovich, is a 4,400-square-foot, three-level Russell Hollingsworth design with “natural stones, edge-grain fir, cedar and walls of concrete and glass.”
It took more than three years to build and has four bedrooms and five bathrooms. Kerfoot has built a bigger house elsewhere in West Vancouver.
Kerfoot raised eyebrows with his 2177 Lake Placid Road mansion on a six-acre lot by Alpha Lake in Whistler. The compound includes an NHL-sized ice rink.
His son, Alex, was the BC Hockey League’s rookie of the year last season when he scored 24 goals (six of them game-winners) and 44 assists for the Coquitlam Express. He was ranked 165th overall by the NHL’s central scouting bureau in April.
Kerfoot has filed a proposal for a 32-storey office and retail tower, with a bike mobility station, at 320 Granville Street and Cordova on the site of a parkade across from Waterfront Station.
Architect Graham McGarva was the designer of Kerfoot’s proposed Whitecaps Waterfront Stadium. Alas, soccer by the sea north of Gastown was not to be after a lukewarm response from Vancouver city hall, no agreement with Port Metro Vancouver on an alternate site and the $563 million renovation of BC Place Stadium.
The Whitecaps’ next big real estate acquisition is for a multi-field training facility.
The team got a $17.5 million grant in 2009 from the provincial government for a failed bid to build onThat money could be used at the
UBC also falls within the bounds of Premier Christy Clark’s constituency. •
