Some of the final preparations for next weekend’s Canadian Championships were being put into action this past weekend in North York where the Lions athletes battled it out against the rest of the province for Ontario bragging rights. In total, the Pride brought home 18 medals including three gold from the U20 and Open Championship.
The action got off to a good start Friday evening when Rebecca Brennan captured silver in the open women’s 5000m – her first ever medal at the Athletics Ontario Championships. Similar to her race a few weeks back in Quebec City, Brennan again smashed her personal best in the even – taking more than ten seconds off her previous standard.
The first gold came from junior runner Will Cox who took the U20 3000m steeplechase in a personal best nine minutes and 38.80 seconds. The margin of victory for the recent Colonel By grad was a significant eight seconds.
Next to grab gold was Stephen Evans in his marquee event – the 800m. The reigning USport 600m champion was able to narrowly edge out former Canadian medalist Corey Bellemore with a time of 1:49.82 to 1:49.86. The summer of 2019 has been a break out season for Evans as he has dropped his personal best below 1:49 in addition to winning the Speed River Inferno and placing as the top Canadian at the Harry Jerome Classic.
Rounding out the Championship with the 4×400 metre relay, the team of Sebastian Saville, Mouhcine Aitouneijar, Vincent Moritz and Andre Alie-Lamarche were victorious in a time of three minutes and 23.69 seconds.
While they didn’t manage to capture gold, the Lions crew of intermediate hurdlers had a very successful weekend picking up one medal in each of the four categories. Coming off a club and Twilight series record over the 300 metre hurdles last Wednesday, Saj Alhaddad captured provincial silver Sunday in the 400 metre hurdle event. Alhaddad’s time of 51.47 was the second fastest of his career. His training partner Quinn Lyness was able to snag U20 bronze in 56.04 seconds, just a hundredth off his lifetime best.
On the women’s side another pair of training partners were able to medal. Helena Jovic posted the second fastest time of her career, running 60.84 seconds to win the U20 women’s 400 metre hurdles. Jovic will be heading to Costa Rica this week to represent Canada at the U20 Pan Am Championships. In the open category, training partner Mary Ollier continued to improve, as she set a new personal best of 61.00 to capture bronze. This was Ollier’s third personal best of the season in the event.
Other medal winners from the weekend included:
Oluwasegun Makinde – Open Men’s 110m Silver
Joe Fast – U20 Men’ s 1500m Silver
Shea McHale, Tyrece Johnson, Quinn Lyness, Joe Fast – U20 Men’s 4x100m Silver
Madison McLean – U20 Women’s Javelin Silver
Tom Nedow – Open Men’s Discus Silver
Divya Biswal – Open Women’s Triple Jump Silver
Oluwasegun Makinde – Open Men’s 200m Silver
Wariso Dullo – U20 Men’s Javelin Bronze
Shea McHale, Quinn Lyness, Joe Fast, Adrian Fournier – U20 Men’s 4x400m Bronze
