Cliff Hucul's adrenaline rush as he gripped the steering wheel as he made the turn towards the main grandstand at Indianapolis Motor Speedway was off the charts.
But once that checkered flag dropped to begin his 500-mile journey there was no time for the Prince George driver to feel nervous. Not when you're traveling 230 miles an hour racing in your first Indianapolis 500.
For Hucul, his first of three consecutive appearances in the grandaddy of all open-wheel races was a long and labourious process just to get to the stage. It started a month earlier when he first arrived at the 2.5-mile track for his rookie driver's test, after a week of practice. Then came two days of qualifying and another week of practice followed by a another qualifying session. Hucul emerged from a field of 120 wannabe qualifiers and made the 33-driver grid for that first race in 1977 but not without having to endure the anguish and expense of two broken motors that put a serious dent into his $100,000 budget.
"The first one was pretty huge, we were there for 30 days in May and that will stretch you out," said Hucul, who will be inducted tonight into the Prince George Sports Hall of Fame, along with track and field coach/builder Brian Martinson and wheelchair basketball player Elisha Williams.
"The unknown is what you're concerned about because you've never done it before, never run that fast before with that many cars and that many drivers and of course the adrenaline is there but you don't think about it. A lot of stuff you block so you can focus on the situation. It was an incredible thing to try to get into it because there were a lot of people involved in trying to make that race there. They were all running good speeds and you had to be able to out-qualify them."
Driving a car he'd purchased from racing legend Johnny Rutherford, Hucul did some soul-searching when his motor blew in a practice lap. He phoned home to his mom in Prince George and she volunteered to remortgage her house to give him the money for a new motor so he could stay in the game. When that one broke, he turned to engine-builder A.J. Watson who pieced the broken parts together and made his car race-ready again.
"Rutherford helped me," Hucul said, "because he'd run the car the year before for McLaren and when I went to qualify he took me aside before I got into the car and he said, 'When you go into Turn 1, don't lift (off the accelerator).'
"So I had to talk myself into that bigtime and took the turn a bit low just in case the car pushed to much coming off and into the wall and went through that turn flat-out and came out of that corner and it was stuck, and I just breathed a little sigh and had a couple words with Jesus as I went into the back straightaway. It was hard-core stuff."
Hucul started 27th and worked his way up to 12th place by the 72nd lap but had problems with his gear box which forced him to retire from the race. But he made enough prize money to pay back his mom's bank loan.
"The guy that finished fifth, I'd lapped him twice by the 72nd lap, so if we had finished the (200-lap) race we'd have been pretty dialed in," said Hucul, who raced all those three seasons on the IndyCar circuit.
In 1979, he was second in points by the halfway mark of the season, trailing only A.J. Foyt, when Hucul ran into more engine trouble that broke the bank.
For the millions of racing fans who tuned in the broadcasts of those three races, Hucul put Prince George on the map.
He was small-town driver from northern British Columbia who learned the ropes of racing stock cars and modified sprint cars in the Prince George Auto Racing Association on the high-banked oval track at PGARA Speedway who took it all the way to the top.
In a coaching career that spanned three decades with the Prince George Track and Field Club, Martinson, a teacher with School District 57, was instrumental in developing a long line of track and cross country runners, including his son Geoff, who went on to become a national-team mid-distance specialist who made it to the world championships. Always an organizer whose attention to detail made events like the 2012 provincial cross country championships memorable occasions, Martinson extended his volunteer commitments into the community as president and race director of the Prince George Road Runners club.
In 2009 he took the reins from Tom Masich as president of the Prince George Track and Field Club and for 15 years was a key organizer behind the North Central Zone track and field meet.
He also never stopped running. Winner of the original Prince George Iceman in 1988, he was a multi-medalist as provincial level masters running events. He finished fourth in the 3,000m steeplechase and fifth in the 8,000m race at the 2005 World Masters Games and in 2009 won a bronze medal in the 1,500m race Canadian Masters track and field championships.
Williams was a high school basketball star with the Duchess Park Condorettes, helping the team win provincial championships in 1995 and 1996. That led to a full-ride scholarship at San Jose State University where she sustained knee injuries that cut short her career in stand-up basketball.
At the suggestion of Pat Harris, who helped pioneer wheelchair basketball at the club and provincial levels in Prince George, Williams started playing the game in 2007 and thrived at it. She made rapid progress from club-level teams to the Canadian Women's Espoir program which got her involved in international tournaments. She was selected an alternate on national team at the 2007 Parapan American Games which won the silver medal in Rio de Janeiro and continued to play for the nats from 2007-13, helping Canada to seven medals in international events. Williams competed in the 2012 Paralympic Games in London, helping Canada to a sixth-place finish.
The podium finishes continued for Williams in 2010 - bronze at the world championships in Birmingham, England, gold at the Paralympic World Cup in Manchester, England and bronze at the Osaka Cup in Japan.
The hall of fame ceremony starts tonight at 6:45 p.m. at the Hart Community Centre. The society will also salute the contributions of a group of young athletes selected for the Youth Excellence Award. That list of winners includes: Colburn Pearce (basketball); Kimiko Kamstra (judo); Jonah Brittons (motocross); Ben Hendrickson (five-pin bowling); Natasha Kozlowski (golf); Anna MacDonald (trampoline); Eric Orlowsky (speed skating); Derian Potskin (baseball and fastball); Ainslee Rushton (lacrosse); Matthew Shand (volleyball); Zenze Stanley-Jones (wrestling); and Jordan Vertue (swimming).
