The Ontario 55+ Summer Games have wrapped up in Greater Sudbury.
The three-day event, which ran from Aug. 5-7, saw athletes aged 55 and up compete in such sports as cycling, tennis, swimming, predictive walking, bowling, shuffleboard, pickleball, slo-pitch, bid euchre, bocce, pool, darts and golf.
At least 800 athletes from 30 communities across Ontario competed at venues scattered across Greater Sudbury.
Today was the final day of competition, with medals being awarded at each sports venue after each championship match. Sudbury.com visited a few of them today to speak with athletes and photograph medal winners.
On Wednesday’s billiards competition, first-time competitor Mike Taus of Sudbury said he is a longtime pool player who decided to try his luck.
“One of my friends is helping out, so I decided to,” Taus said, adding he was up three games to two yesterday. “I”m not doing too bad.”
At Sudbury’s Holiday Inn on Regent Street, card game action continued throughout Thursday. Events capped with medal ceremonies to celebrate the games’ big winners.
In the cribbage category, Thunder Bay’s Jim Baldi and Jennifer Austin earned gold, followed closely by Timmins players Lou Ann Arquette and Judy Charbonneau, and then Tara (Bruce County) players Nancy Devries in bronze.*
The winning pair both said they were surprised to have won in a field with so many skilled players.
Although they’re regular cribbage players in Thunder Bay, this was the first competition of this level they have participated in.
The experience, Baldi said, was “awesome.”
“We played with a lot of great people, met people from all over and it was quite the experience for both of us,” Devries said.
Both unfamiliar with Sudbury, the gold-winning duo didn’t have much of chance to explore the Nickel City thus far in their travels, with a 13-hour car ride zonking them out followed by a day-and-a-half of cribbage at the Holiday Inn.
They enjoyed a Wednesday night dinner at Science North alongside hundreds of other 55+ Summer Games participants and their families, and with cribbage wrapping up at mid-day on Thursday Devries said they’d finally have a chance to explore the city.
The slo-pitch games ended with the Green Machine (London) topping the recreational tournament and Start Safe (Tillsonburg) earning gold in the competitive tournament.
For Team Essa (Etobicoke), the name of the game was fun, and they didn’t appear discouraged while lounging in lawn chairs at the Terry Fox Fields parking lot following the final games on Thursday afternoon.
Finishing fourth of four teams in the recreational tournament, players joked about their performance while toasting drinks.
“We were consistent,” team captain Mike Peterson said to laughter from his teammates.
*Editor's note: This line has been corrected to reflect the accurate medal placements.