sa国际传媒

It is increasingly looking to be a dream deferred to 2021 for the numerous Island athletes who have been training for the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics. At least it won鈥檛 be a dream denied with outright cancellation.

The toughest phone calls were to the graduating 20-year-olds whose major-junior careers ended without a further puck being shot.

The announcement Sunday night that sa国际传媒 will not send a team to the Tokyo Olympics this summer due to the COVID-19 pandemic, rippled through the sporting community on the Island, where numerous athletes have been training for the 2020 Games.

Phil Olsen of Nanaimo, who possessed one of the strongest throwing arms across any sport in Canadian history, has died at 63. Olsen was out collecting firewood with wife, Nancy, last Sunday when he suffered a massive coronary.

Sport has taken the brunt of event cancellations caused by COVID-19 and it continues to wreak havoc on the sporting calendar.

The Victoria Royals鈥� 2019-20 campaign will go into the books at 32-24-8 after the Western Hockey League scuttled the remainder of the regular season Wednesday because of COVID-19.

The Victoria Royals are among the Western Hockey League teams, who over the weekend, sent their players back to their families and hometowns amidst the league shutdown due to COVID-19.

Seven-foot-tall Cord Clemens spun, literally, one of the tallest tales in University of Victoria Vikes basketball history. The former UVic and sa国际传媒 post player died this month of esophageal cancer at age 56.

The sa国际传媒-Trinidad and Tobago soccer games March 27 and March 31 at Westhills Stadium have become the first COVID-19 casualties of a heavy spring and summer of scheduled international sporting events on the Island.

Victoria Royals general manager Cam Hope said the suspension of the Western Hockey League season was a difficult but necessary decision. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a global situation and everyone has to assume their role,鈥� said Hope.