Just under a year ago Divya Biswal left her New York City job in finance and headed west with fiancé Justin Wood to live and train full-time in La Verne, California. The change in lifestyle and training environment has paid huge dividends already in this early season as she once again extended her Club Record in the triple jump this weekend, landing out at 13. 44 metres. Her previous mark of 13.38 metres was set April 20.
After a first round foul for Biswal, she found her place on the runway on the second attempt, bounding out to her new lifetime best. The mark had her in the gold medal position until round five when London’s Caroline Ehrhardt jumped ahead with her jump of 13.60 metres. Biswal’s series of jumps bodes well as she also had marks of 13.29 and 13.35 metres in the final two rounds.
Biswal followed up her triple jump performance with a commanding victory in the long jump. The St. Lawrence University graduate only used three of her six allotted jumps, but that was more than enough as a leap of 6.33 metres in round two was good enough to win by more than a foot. Unfortunately, for Biswal, the leap was aided by a 2.8 metres per second tailwind, so it will not count for record purposes despite being the longest of her career.
On her Instagram account, Biswal was appreciative of the results, saying, “What a difference a few days and getting to be with your best friend (twin Devyani) makes. Very happy to have come away from today with a pb in TJ (13.44m) and a wind aided pb in LJ (6.33m).”
Elsewhere this weekend, a small group of athletes traveled east to Quebec City for the Soirée Rouge et Or highlighted by some excellent performances from our 5000 metre runners. In fact the entire quartet of Rebecca Brennan, Adrian Fournier, Andre Alie-Lamarche, and Nic Roberts all recorded new lifetime bests. Brennan made the largest improvement, finishing eighth in 17 minutes and 39.54 seconds – a staggering 70 seconds below her previous mark. Fournier was fifth in the junior men’s race, shedding five seconds from his previous best with a time of 15:34.49. In the senior men’s contest, Alie-Lamarche cut 38 seconds off his personal best to finish seventh (14:39.24) while Roberts was 16th in 15:11.92 – 40 seconds faster than his previous best.
Over 800m, Charlotte Gardner and Sebastian Saville picked up a pair of silver medals. Gardner was nipping at the heals of Karine Belleau-Béliveau, crossing the line in 2 minutes and 7.75 seconds, just three tenths behind the former World Championship competitor. Similarly, Saville finished in 1 minute and 51.73 seconds, 25 hundredths behind Vincent Dugay of Laval.
Rounding things things out, pole vaulters Annabelle Gagne and Claudine Nafaa took gold and silver with jumps of 3.05 and 2.90 metres respectively.
