David Adeleye’s long-awaited return to competition was the headline moment for Ottawa Lions athletes competing this weekend at the Lancer Can-Am Classic, held Friday and Saturday at the University of Windsor.
The 23-year-old Western University graduate student had not raced since suffering an Achilles injury in 2024 that sidelined him for the entirety of the 2025 season, but there was little sign of rust as the 2024 U SPORTS silver medallist in the 60-metre hurdles opened his campaign with a dominant 7.94-second performance in Friday’s preliminaries. The time not only secured Adeleye’s qualification for the 2026 U SPORTS Championships in Winnipeg this March, but also moved him to No. 1 on the early season Canadian rankings list.
Adeleye elected not to contest the final later that evening, but his return alone marked one of the most encouraging early-season performances by a Lions athlete this winter.
Western’s strong showing in the hurdles continued with combined-events athlete Leo Wallner, who delivered the fastest 60-metre hurdle race of his career in the preliminaries. Wallner clocked 8.37 seconds to advance to the final, before finishing eighth in 8.77. The performance capped a stretch of steady improvement for Wallner, who has lowered his personal best in each of his three meets this season, slicing nearly four-tenths of a second off his lifetime best.
In the throws, University of Guelph second-year student Liam Davis produced a pair of podium finishes, earning silver medals in both the shot put and weight throw. Davis battled consistency in Friday’s shot put, recording just two legal throws but still managing a best of 14.81 metres to finish runner-up behind defending U SPORTS champion AJ Stanat of Windsor. He rebounded on Saturday in the weight throw with four legal efforts, highlighted by a 16.50-metre toss that again placed him second to the hometown Lancer.
Also for the Gryphons, first-year sprinter Kaiya Woodcock enjoyed an impressive U SPORTS debut, advancing through three rounds of the women’s 60 metres and placing fourth in the final in 7.83 seconds. Woodcock was at her best in the semifinals, where she ran a personal best 7.73 to move into eighth place on the Ottawa Lions’ all-time U20 list. A two-sport athlete at Guelph, Woodcock is coming off a busy fall with the Gryphons’ women’s soccer team, where she appeared in 11 matches as the program advanced to the U SPORTS Championship.
Many of the Lions’ varsity athletes will be back in action next weekend, with Western set to host the Don Wright Challenge in London, while Guelph’s squad will split between the Fred Foot Classic at the University of Toronto and the Upstate Challenge at Cornell.