With a bronze medal from the national senior championships and a new Canadian record in his back pocket, Adam Palamar knew people would definitely be gunning for him as he looked to repeat as Canadian Junior 1500m champion. Nonetheless, Palamar showed he was the class of the field in Saturday’s final as he led from the gun, battling the wind to easily pick up his second consecutive junior title in 3:51.04, with the next closest competitor finished more than two seconds behind. Also in the race was teammate Alex Wilkie who pulled out a top 10 finish with a 4:00.76 clocking. Palamar would later follow up his 1500m victory by winning his 800m semi-final – advancing him to Sunday’s finals.
In the decathlon, both Matthew Johnson and Kevin Nault had a phenomenal second day as each man added more than 400 points to their overall personal best coming into the meet. Johnson, who finished in sixth with 6110 points, pulled off one of the most interesting feats of the championship as he made his first attempt at 4.00m in the pole vault. Shortly after taking off the ground his pole snapped in half, sending him flying onto the mat where he landed safely, but it was a small piece of his pole that flew 75 metres across the track to land in the combined events tent that caught the attention of a few. Despite the set back, Johnson would go on to clear 4.20m, a height equal to that of the bronze medalist in the open competition.
One of the busiest individuals on the second day of the championship was 19 year old Charlotte Gardner who appeared to be the only individual contesting the difficult 400m/800m double. After running to a season best 57.18 seconds in the 400m, Gardner came back less than 30 minutes later to run in the qualifying section of the 800m. As the field went through 400m in a pedestrian 70 seconds, Gardner was able to make use of her 400m speed to sprint past most of the field to cross the line in second and advance to the evening semi-finals where she would run the second best race of her life, 2:17.63 – two spots out of the final.
Heading into the third and final day on Sunday, keep an eye out for medal threats Adam Palamar in the 800m, Ashley Connell in the shot put and of course the boys and girls relay teams.
