We expect there was a good amount celebrating at the Smith/Telford residence Sunday night following a golden weekend at their respective university conference championships for the two Lions varsity athletes.Roommates Sydney Smith and Alexandra Telford combined for a trio of gold medals this past weekend at the OUA and RSEQ Championships and did so in rather impressive fashion.
First to the podium was Smith who executed her 600m race strategy to absolute perfection. Biding her time for the first two laps, Smith surged past Guelph’s Sadie-Jane Hickson on the bell lap to capture her first OUA title in a personal best time of 1:30.37. The performance ranks as the sixth fastest in Club history.
The human kinetics graduate student nearly picked up a second medal in the 4×400 metre relay as her speedy anchor leg of 54.64 seconds took the Gee-Gees to within half a second of bronze. However, with their time of 3:51.66, the team of Doyin Ogunremi, Hannah Frazer, Frédérique Bell, and Smith will qualify for the USports Championship in two weeks time.
For Telford, her victories came fast and furious on day two of the Quebec conference championship. The Carleton graduate student began with a personal best effort to take the 60 metre hurdle title in 8.97 seconds. It was part of an Ottawa sweep of the podium, as silver went to fellow Lion Vanessa Lu Langley who is studying at McGill, while bronze went to recent University of Ottawa graduate Stéphanie Lapolice, who is completing graduate work in health promotion at Université Laval.
Less than an hour after her hurdles triumph, Telford was back on the track for the final of the 300 metres and another personal best performance. Her winning time of 38.74 seconds was more than a full second clear of the second place runner. Telford’s time moves her into fifth on the Club’s all-time list as she jumps ahead of two-time Olympian Alicia Brown.
Carleton’s Alec Jeffrey also found his way onto the podium at the RSEQ Championship. The school record holder in the shot put, Jeffrey heaved the shot out to 13.33 metres to claim the silver medal.
Picking up a silver medal at the OUA Championships was the University of Ottawa’s Thomas Senechal-Becker. The first year student cleared 2.02 metres in the high jump.
Another noteworthy performance included Emma Martins’ fifth place finish in the 60 metre final with a personal best time of 7.77 seconds. As well, David Adeleye, running for the University of Toronto, was just off his lifetime best, placing 6th in the 60 metre hurdles in 8.22 seconds, while Jenna Gervais (Western) set a personal best of 9.02 to qualify for the final of the women’s hurdles event, where she would place seventh overall. Finally, Brianna Asiamah just missed her lifetime best by three centimetres in the shot put with a 12.45 metre heave to place seventh.