Thirty-three years ago, South Delta’s Peter Motzek and Joy Fera were in the midst of their own Olympic experience as they proudly wore the Maple Leaf as members of Canada’s team in Montreal.

Next February, the pair will re-kindle that feeling as they carry the torch just days before the opening of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver.

Fera, who was part of Canada’s rowing team says she was delighted to be chosen to hold the torch aloft for the 300 metre stretch she has been assigned on Feb. 11—the day prior to the opening ceremonies—through Coquitlam.

“I am ever-so thrilled and grateful to be given this opportunity,” says Fera who is one of a large group of former Olympians selected to carry the torch. “With the opening of the games so close, it will be very exciting.”

The athletes were asked to choose three spots along the country-wide route—she listed Cranbrook, her home town, Delta, where she lives now, and finally Vernon, where she was born.

Fera adds she had been asked if she’d like to have carried the torch in Montreal outside the Olympic Stadium and briefly thought about the vivid memories she has of the games in that city.

“But I would have been there pretty much all alone with my family and friends back here,” she says, adding the Coquitlam will be very special to her.

“It will be day 104 of the 105 day trek of the torch across the country,” she says.

Fera adds her inclusion as a torchbearer was an answer to her prayers and intends on dedicating 100 metres of her run each to the memory of VANOC board chair Jack Poole who recently passed away from cancer, Dr. Gene Sutton, a member of the Canadian Olympic Committee, and Wendy Ladner-Beaudry, a long-time community sports advocate who was murdered last April in Vancouver.

Closer to home, local realtor Peter Motzek—who was on Canada’s field hockey team—will be carrying the torch along the route between Richmond and Surrey on Feb. 9, day 103 of the event.

Motzek said he was contacted by Olympic officials and asked if he’d be interested.

He hadn’t thought about the chance prior to the call, and is now eagerly anticipating the opportunity.

Motzek, 52, started playing field hockey at the age of 10 with the Tsawwassen Falcons and graduated to the Canadian national side when he was just 16.

Motzek says he enjoyed his Olympic experience, despite the Canadian team’s single win at the event—3-1 over heated rivals Argentina.

“They (Argentina) were always big rivals because we were in the same qualification pool for the Olympics and Pan American Games,” Motzek says. “We’d always seem to duke it out with them.”

To prepare for his 300 metre turn with the torch, Motzek says he has embarked on a casual training regimen, but he has not decided if he intends to run the distance.

editor@southdeltaleader.cdom