EUGENE, Ore. — Two athletes with Ottawa Lions ties will compete at the World Athletics U20 Championships this week, as the biennial global meet for junior athletes returns to the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field from Aug. 5 to 9.
Zachary Jeggo will carry the Lions banner into the men’s 400 metres and is expected to feature for a Canadian 4×400-metre relay team. The 19-year-old from Embrun, won the U20 400-metre title at the Canadian Track and Field Championships in Ottawa this June to earn his place on the national team. The Simon Fraser University student also holds the Canadian U20 indoor record over the distance, becoming the first Canadian teenager to break 47 seconds indoors when he clocked 46.72 in February at the Great Northwest Athletic Conference Championships in Spokane, Wash. Jeggo enters the Championship with an outdoor personal best of 46.62 set in London, Ont., in June 2025. He has also been named a captain of the Canadian team for the championships.
Jeggo faces a deep field in Eugene. Four entrants in the men’s 400 metres have run under 45 seconds, including Americans Jayden DeLeon (World U20 #3) and 2024 Olympic relay gold medallist Quincy Wilson (World U20 #4).
Also competing at Hayward Field is Carolin Evers, who was a Lions member during the 2024-25 season while completing an exchange program. Though Evers competed just once in club colours, her clearance of 1.66 metres in the high jump ranked third all-time among the Lions’ U18 athletes. The 18-year-old will represent her native Germany in Eugene, where she carries a season’s best of 1.83 metres, a personal record she set in June to qualify for the championships.
The championships mark the return of the event to Eugene for the first time since 2014, when the meet was known as the IAAF World Junior Championships. On that occasion the Lions were represented by Erinn Stenman-Fahey, who advanced to the semifinals of the women’s 800 metres.
More than 1,800 athletes from around the world are entered across the five-day program.