It was a good morning for Sharelle Samuel and her Team Canada 4×400 metre relay teammates on the penultimate day of competition at the 14th IAAF World U20 Championships in Tampere, Finland as the quartet handily advanced to tomorrow’s final.
Running third, Samuel helped her Canadian team to a second place finish in semi-final number two, half a second behind the quartet from Australia. Finishing in a seasonal best of 3:36.14, Canada posted the sixth fastest time in qualifying and will race out of lane eight in the tomorrow’s final.
In the 100m hurdles semi-final, Keira Christie-Galloway’s race was almost over before it started when the field was recalled for an apparent false start. While the replays appeared to indicate movements in the lanes to her outside, it was Keira’s lane showing a reaction time of 0.999 seconds, one one-thousandth of a second below the legal limit.
Thankfully for Kristie-Galloway, she was only shown a yellow card and was able to continue the race, where she placed fifth in her heat with a time of 13.71 seconds. She would finish 17th overall, a marked improvement over her placing from two years ago in Bydgoscz, Poland. Keira was also the lead off runner for Canada’s 4×100 metre relay entry on Friday which finished fifth in their heat in 45.68 seconds, but failed to advance.
Lauren Gale made her debut at a global championship Friday morning in the 200 metres. The Colorado State University bound runner, failed to replicate the form she showed in winning the Colorado 4A state championship in May, finishing seventh in her heat with a time of 24.78 seconds. She did not advance.
