The Hamilton Sports Hall of Fame has announced its inductees for 2021.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the hall of fame has opted to induct a “Legends Class” of four athletes and one team whose accomplishments were mostly prior to 1950.
This year’s inductees are powerboat racing pioneer Harry Greening, Olympic swimmer and football player George Larson, football player and trainer Jimmie Simpson, football player and coach Brian Timmis and the 1932 Leander men’s heavy eights Olympic rowers.
Greening pioneered powerboat racing in 1908 with four race boats named Gadfly and in 1920 with nine more boats named Rainbow.
His ‘Rainbow Seven’ won the Lipton Trophy, emblematic of North American Powerboat Racing supremacy and presented to the Royal Hamilton Yacht Club for permanent display in 1967.
The American Power Boating Association honoured Greening in 1953 as one of the top 10 pioneers contributing most to powerboat racing over the previous 50 years.
Greening has also been inducted into the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame and the Royal Hamilton Yacht Club Hall of Fame.
Larson competed in the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, where he swam to a fourth-place finish in the men’s four-by-200-metre freestyle relay, and also competed in the 400-metre freestyle event.
Larson also participated in the 1936 Berlin Games but was eliminated early in the 100-metre freestyle.
He captured the gold medal in the four-by-200-yard freestyle relay at the 1934 British Empire Games in London, England, and won silver in the 100-yard freestyle.
Larson finished fourth in the 440-yard freestyle and sixth in the 1,500-yard ‘free.’
When his swimming career ended, Larson played football for the Hamilton Tigers and Hamilton Flying Wildcats and became a professional wrestler under the pseudonym ‘Irish Tom Collins.’
The 1932 men’s heavy eights Olympic rowing team from the Leander Boat Club won the Olympic trials on July 19, 1932, beating the favoured Argonaut crew, in a time of five minutes 29 and four-fifths seconds — the fastest time ever recorded in North America at the time.
The Hamilton crew of Albert Taylor, Donald Boal, William Thorburn, Cedric Liddell, Harry Fry, Stanley Stanyar, Joe Harris, Earl Eastwood and cox Les MacDonald won the Olympic bronze medal in Los Angeles.
Simpson participated in 19 Grey Cups as a player, official and trainer, and won four championships in his playing days with the Hamilton Tigers and Flying Wildcats.
The five-foot-six, 135-pound Simpson was an All-Eastern End in 1937 but was forced to retire the following year after he suffered a broken jaw.
Simpson became a football official before returning as a player at age 37 and played two seasons with the Wildcats.
He joined the Hamilton Tiger-Cats as an assistant trainer and became head trainer from 1960 until his death in 1975.
Simpson was elected to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1986.
Nicknamed ‘The Old Man of the Mountain,’ Brian Timmis enjoyed a 20-year playing career in Canadian football on offence and defence.
Timmis suffered a neck injury, caused by his chinstrap, in 1921, so he decided to play the rest of his career without a helmet.
He joined the Hamilton Tigers in 1924 and won three Grey Cups as a player in 1928, 1929 and 1932, and won a fourth championship as a coach of the Flying Wildcats in 1943.
The two-time East All-Star was an inaugural member of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, and is also enshrined in Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame.
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