It was an army of one for the Ottawa Lions at the Canadian Indoor Championships this past weekend in Montreal, but that one soldier was victorious. Nicoholas Pedersen captured gold in the U20 men’s 1500 metre race in a time of 4 minutes 12.15 seconds. It was the Pedersen’s second national level medal after finishing third as part of the Youth Boys Cross Country team in 2017.
South of the border, the combined events athletes opened up their season in sunny Las Vegas. Competing in the two day competition on the campus of the University of Nevada Las Vegas, Telvin Tavernier and Emily Sprague each posted top five results. Tavernier had the top performances in both the long jump, a windy 7.10m leap, and the 1500m en-route to posting the second best score of his life, 6675 points, to finish fourth overall.
Rookie heptathlete Emily Sprague bested the 4000 point mark in her inagural event, scoring 4122 points to finish fifth in the 14 woman field. Sprague recorded strong performances in the 100m hurdles, 200m, and a victory in the long jump with a windy jump of 5.34m.
In Southern California, Divya Biswal had the best opening performances of her career as she posted a pair of podium finishes at the Redlands Invitational. Biswal spent a significant portion of her winter training focusing on speed, which paid off with a second place in the 100m event. The 26 year old posted a new personal best time of 12.10 seconds while running into a slight headwind. It was a drastic improvement from her previous best of 12.74 seconds set two years ago at Princeton University. Biswal also claimed gold in the long jump, just missing the six metre barrier. Working with only four attempts, Biswal’s best jump measured 5.94 metres, the fourth best distance of her career, as she battled another strong headwind.
