In preparation for next year’s World Master’s Championships set for Toronto next summer, a number of Lions athletes head south on the 401 last weekend to compete at the North and Central America and Caribbean Region of World Masters Athletics Championships in the Ontario capital.
The small contingent of athletes brought home a number of medals and a Canadian record. The medal haul was led by the duo of Liz Maguire and Wendy Alexis who each captured a pair of gold medals.
Alexis, who is no stranger to the international masters athletics scene completed the sprint double, taking the W60 100m and 200m titles. The former world champion was the only athlete in the field to crack the 14 second barrier, winning in a time of 13.98 seconds. That performance was followed up by a time of 30.01 seconds in the 200m.
Similarly, Maguire completed the middle distance sweep, taking the W50 800m and 1500m titles. While her margin of victory was less than half a second over the two lap race (2:29.08), Maguire’s victory at 1500m was more convincing as she won by a second and a half in 5:05.66.
Setting a new Canadian record was Hazel Harding, who teamed up with Tanya Sakharov, Sheree Mulligs and Alessia Berti to win the W35 4x400m relay. Competing in a category ten year’s her junior, Harding helped the quartet to a time of four minutes and 25.85 seconds. Harding also picked up a silver in the W45 4x100m.
Serge Faucher was also a member of one of Canada’s medal winning relay teams as he and teammates Ken Kudo, Bruce Rosvall and Chris Lemassif were second across the line in the M50 4x100m with a time of 48.47 seconds. Faucher’s relay success was his second medal of the championship as he took bronze in the M55 200m with a time of 25.90 seconds, running into a nasty 3.0 metre per second head wind.
The final medal of the championship came from the group’s oldest member, 71 year old Stan Seitz. The septuagenarian had a strong performance in the pole vault with a best clearance of 2.70m.
