Old friends and a new course created a perfect sporting holiday for Sidney’s Gordon Oates.
Fair skies and a bronze medal didn’t hurt either. A regular on the greens of Ardmore Golf Course, Oates earned a bronze in golf at the BC Senior’s Games last week in Castlegar.
“That’s sort of secondary to me,” he said of the medal.
The 65-year-old has attended the Games eight or nine times, and holds two previous gold medals and a bronze from the BC Senior Games competition.
“We make a little holiday of it,” Oates said. “I enjoy the fellowship of all the other guys that come out year after year … A lot of the guys are just there to have fun and golf on courses they’ve never golfed before.”
The BC Seniors Games is an annual, multi-sport event hosted by a different BC Community each year. They are one of the largest Games organized within BC with about 3,500 participants, aged 55 and older from all over the province. Vancouver Island South scored 72 gold, 50 silver and 19 bronze medals in the games held last week in the West Kootenays.
The 2012 BC Seniors Games will be hosted by Burnaby from August 21 to 25.