All posts by : Ottawa Lions Track and Field Club

As the heat continued to beat down on the track at Terry Fox Wednesday, the first medals of the 2018 Canadian Championships were handed out with Lions athletes picking up a full set of gold, silver and bronze.
Runners Keegan Gaunt and Shanna Boutillier went one-two in the women’s para ambulatory 400m to capture the club’s first medals of the championship. Gaunt’s winning time of 1:02.50 surpassed her own yet to be ratified Canadian T13 record of 1:02.84 set last spring in Tempe, Arizona. Boutillier, a Canadian record holder in the T46 category, was second to cross the line in a time of 1:06.51 for silver.
Closing out the evening on the track was the decathlon 1500m, which brought an end to an intense two days of competition across the ten events. While Matthew Johnson was victorious in the final event in a personal best 4:20.08, it was teammate Telvin Tavernier who took home the Canadian bronze with a personal best of 6719 points.
Tavernier was not the only Lion decathlete to improve their personal best on the day as both John Claude Van Biljon and Kevin Nault peaked for the championships, While Van Biljon scored higher than Tavernier with 6788 points, he did not figure into the Canadian medals as a South African citizen. Nault’s total of 6128 points was nearly a 350 point improvement on his previous best despite only setting one individual event best – finally breaking the five minute barrier in the 1500m in 4:51.89.
Day three of the Canadian Championships continues today with many qualifying events and culminating in the Run Ottawa Distance Night beginning at 6 pm.
To purchase tickets, https://www.showclix.com/event/canadian-track-field-championships-2018
Live Results: http://liveresults.athletics.ca/Live_Results/2018/Championships/
Live Stream: athleticscanada.tv
 
 

Canada’s Georgia Ellenwood and USA’s Scott Filip capped their 2018 season on a high note by taking the Pan American Combined Events Cup in Ottawa, part of the IAAF World Combined Events Challenge, held at Ottawa’s Terry Fox Athletics Facility July 3-4.

The 23-year old Canadian ended her best season yet. After breaking the 6000-point barrier for the first time in her career and twice over 6100 including her NCAA title, Ellenwood over took Day 1 leader Chari Hawkins of the USA in the Javelin and held on to take her first international title under very warm conditions during the two days of competition.

Also enjoying her best campaign so far, 27-year old Hawkins took an early lead thanks to a swift 13.48 in 100m Hurdles and a season’s best of 1.81m in the High Jump. Sitting on top after the first day with a 3,593 total, 17 more than the Canadian, she kept the lead in the Long Jump (6.03m to Ellenwood’s 6.02m).

The Javelin was the turning point with Ellenwood throwing 42.25m, over a metre than Hawins’ best effort of 41.01m. That put the NCAA champion ahead of Hawinks by a mere four points going into the final event.

Paced by fellow Canadians, Dallyssa Huggins and defending champion Nicole Oudenaarden, Ellenwood broke way clear from Hawinks on the first lap and finished strong to secure the win with 6026 points, 22 ahead of the American.

“Four points is certainly not a lot going into the 800m so you need to be confident I am a pretty good 800m runner so I just needed to do what I have been doing all year so I had a decent first and a last 150m so I am happy to come out here and compete in Ottawa again and have a good competition,” said Ellenwood.

“I didn’t expect to score over 6000 points but my expectations have go higher after scoring 6100 twice so it was really nice to come out here and be able to score 6000 points, so it gives me a lot of confidence going into the off season and into next year. I have a couple of minor injuries. Nothing too bad so I will just focus on healing and getting back into good shape to be excited to compete again next year,” she added.

Hawkins was rewarded with her second score over 6000 points. “Honestly, this is one of the most proud I have ever been of myself. I actually started the heptathlon injured. I had to push through and rely on my family, my friends and my teammates and my body. I have never been so proud of myself to compete for team USA on the 4th of July. I couldn’t ask for anything more under the circumstances,” she stated.

She also had words of praise for her closest rival. “Georgia is an amazing athlete and so much fun to compete with. She is also an amazing 800m runner. I knew I had to stay close to her, but unfortunately I was way behind on the first lap. But I told myself, you only get one more chance to try to make a run at it, so I knuckled down and tried to push through anything I had left, but she had an incredible kick at the end so I was not able to overcome her, but I was super proud of myself. It was my second best 800m ever.”

Hawinks also credited her teammates for her performance despite suffering from cramping in her calves. The heptathlon “is such a fun event. There is such a sisterhood. We help each other. We cheer for each other and we hope each other does their very best. Lindsay has been my training partner for the past two years at Santa Barbara Track Club and Jaclyn and I made the first USA team for the Thorpe Cup last year. I was sure I was going to finish. I was cramping all day and did not think I was going to finish. They were supporting, hyping me up and they are the reason I was able to finish”.

Defending champion Nicole Oudenaarden settled for bronze with 5833.

The men’s competition became a USA affair after the early departure of 2017 Taylor Steward and the absence of defending champion Pierce Lepage from Canada.

Competing in his fourth decathlon of the year, Scott Filip set the pace with the best performances in 100m (10.66), equaling his season’s best, and the Long Jump (7.48m) to finish Day 1 with a 4185-point total, 164 more than his closest rival, fellow American Mitch Modin.

The University of Rice graduate increased his lead to 224 points following the 110m Hurdles and that proved to be insurmountable as Filip went on to regain a title first won in 2016.

He scored 7643 points and led an USA sweep in the men’s competition with Modin (7495) and Jack Flood (7376) joining him on the podium.

This victory “means everything. Just like my other teammates being able to compete for the United States and wear that name USA on your chest is pretty much the highest honour you can have as a track and field athlete, so I have incredible gratitude to our coaching staff and decision makers to allow me to be on this USA team”, said the winner.

Filip keep great memories of Ottawa, where he first competed internationally, in 2016 and won the Cup, following an elbow surgery earlier that year.

“The decathlon is a grueling competition and ultimately we have to face individuals, but being out here with a great group of guys no matter who you are competing with we know exactly how we are feeling. We feed off from each other’s energy to keep push ourselves to do the best we can individually through all these events and once we cross the finish line it’s all hugs. We look forward to sharing our memories with everybody else, “ added Filip, who looks forward to spending time with family and friends in his hometown of Chicago.

Combing the best two results per country, Canada lifted the women’s Pan American Cup while the USA won the men’s division and the overall Cup adding the performances of men and women.

The younger divisions went to Puerto Rico’s Yariel Soto (6997) and Canada’s Chloé Royce (4892) in the U20 category. Canadians Owen McDonald and Shae Ledevehat topped the U18 divisions.

The next stop of the IAAF Combined Events Challenge will be the European Championships in Berlin, in August.

End

A barrage of rain didn’t manage to slow down Lion athletes last weekend at the Athletics Ontario Junior/Senior Championships at the Pan Am Stadium in Toronto. A total of 21 athletes helped bring home 18 medals including 4 gold.
Commonwealth Games medalist Tim Nedow handily won the provincial shot put title with a heave of 20.61 metres. In fact, all four of the Brockville native’s measured throws would have won the competition by more than a metre. This was Nedow’s final competition prep before he attempts to win his sixth straight Canadian shot put title next Friday night at Terry Fox.
Tim wasn’t the only Nedow to walk away with a medal. His younger brother Thomas took home bronze in the senior men’s discus throw. Competing in a circle submerged in water, the younger Nedow unleashed the discus out to a personal best 48.23m. The distance ranks the first year senior athlete ninth nationally heading into the Canadian Championships.
On the track, Sharelle Samuel didn’t let moving up an age class affect her medal hopes. Moving up to the open 400m, the 17 year old Samuel showed she could hold her own with the big girls, posting a new personal best time of 53.68 seconds to finish second behind Windsor’s Kelsey Balkwill.
Also moving up a category was sprint hurdler Keira Christie-Galloway. The newly minted Canadian junior record holder placed second in the open women’s 100m hurdle event in a time of 13.57 seconds. Finishing in third was teammate Devyani Biswal who crossed the line in 13.81 seconds.
Christie-Galloway and Samuel teamed up with Paulina Procyk and Rinila Haridas to win the junior women’s 4x100m race though in a time of 48.13 seconds. The Lions also picked up a relay silver with the team of Stephanie Gould, Sophia Skorenky, Emmanuelle Keogh and Mary Ollier crossed the line in 48.83 seconds.
Other winners from the weekend included junior pole vaulter Caroline Poirier and senior 5000m runner Becca Brennan. Poirier’s clearance of 3.55m was just under her seasonal best of 3.60m set two weeks prior en route to winning OFSAA silver in the same stadium.
Other medalists from the the Championship included:

• using the “drop off” lane southbound on Riverside Dr
• parking at Brookfield High School (short walk to the facility, free)

For the second World U20 Championships in a row, three ladies of the Ottawa Lions have been named to represent Team Canada. The Championships, which run July 10-15 in Tampere, Finland, will include Keira Christie-Galloway, Lauren Gale and Sharelle Samuel.
This will be Christie-Galloway’s second U20 and third world championship overall after finishing 39th in the 100m hurdles two years ago in Bydgoszcz, Poland. The University of Ottawa student, who broke the school record indoors as a freshman, has carried that success outdoors including a new Canadian junior record last week. While Christie-Galloway is currently ranked 16th globally according to the IAAF, she would be seeded sixth going into the event, after allowing a maximum of two American entries.
While Gale and Samuel both have international experience from last year’s Commonwealth Youth Games Team, this will be the first global championship for both. Gale will compete in the 200m following a personal best performance of 23.96 seconds at the Colorado State 4A Championships earlier this month.
Samuel will contest the 400m, an event she finished fourth in at last year’s Commonwealth Youth Games. The Ashbury student has a seasonal best of 53.77 seconds following her win at the OFSAA Championships just two weeks ago.
Both Samuel and Gale could also figure into a Canadian 4x400m relay team as the duo are currently ranked second and third respectively in the 400m. Canada is the defending bronze medalists in the relay, and should include two returning members from the 2016 team.
 

We’re starting to think Shanna Boutilier really enjoys the Arizona sun. For the second year in a row, the sprinter returned home from the Desert Challenge Games in Tempe with a new Canadian Record in the T46 400m.
The 21 year old handily won the event in a time of 1:06.10, more than three seconds ahead of her nearest competitor, to break her own Canadian record. Boutilier had previously broken the record twice in 2017, including last year’s Desert Challenge Games performance.
However, the 400m wasn’t the only event in which the Algonquin College veterinary technology student set a new lifetime best. Boutilier also set new personal standards in both the 100m and 200m events with times of 14.71 and 29.43 seconds respectively to capture bronze in each event.
Next up for Boutilier is the Canadian Championships in Ottawa, where she will be looking to defend her national title in the women’s ambulatory 400m. The event runs July 3-8. For more information and to get tickets, visit athletics.ca/championnat/ottawa2018/

Even the hosts of Wednesday night’s Inferno meet in Guelph talked about weathering the storm.
However, the storm was no match for 100m hurdler Keira Christie-Galloway. The University of Ottawa student edged her way into the Canadian record books with her second place finish, behind Olympian Shermaine Williams, in a time of 13.31 seconds. Christie-Galloway trimmed one one hundredth of a second off the previous standard set by Karen Nelson at the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane. Breaking big records is nothing new for the 18 year old, having previously bested Perdita Felicien’s long standing 100m hurdle OFSAA record in 2016.
Christie-Galloway wasn’t the only Lion to re-write the record books in Wednesday’s race as teammates Farah Jacques and Devyani Biswal each posted significant lifetime bests to move up in the club’s all-time rankings. Jacques finished just off the podium in fourth with a time of 13.36 seconds while Biswal was sixth in 13.43. The performances move the ladies to fourth and fifth respectively in club history.
While we’re sure Keira would love to celebrate her new found record in front of a home crowd in three weeks at the Canadian Championships, she will likely be boarding a flight to Tampere, Finland for the upcoming IAAF U20 Championships instead. Wednesday’s performance all but guarantees her a spot on the team which will be announced Tuesday  and depart for Europe depart two days before the preliminary rounds begin at nationals.
However, she is likely to be surrounded by a familiar face on the flight as club mate and fellow Gee-Gee Maeliss Trapeau won Wednesday’s Ottawa Twilight 800m in a lifetime best of 2:04.82. With the performance, Trapeau has moved into the number one ranking in Canada with just four days to go before the team is selected. Wednesday’s winning time also moved Trapeau into fourth in club history and currently ranks her 15th globally.
Also waiting to see if they are named to the Canadian U20 team are Sharelle Samuel (400m & 400mH) and Lauren Gale (200m & 400m) who have achieved the standard are currently are ranked in the top two nationally in one of their events.

The Lions pride brought home a total of eight medals from this past weekend’s OFSAA High School Championships at the Pan Am Stadium in Toronto. The haul was headlined by Sharelle Samuel’s double gold and Joe Fast’s collection of a gold and silver.
Samuel came tantalizingly close to better her lifetime bests on her gold medal runs in both the 400m and 400m hurdle events. The Ashbury Collegiate student was the class of the field in both events, winning the 400m on Friday in a time of 53.77 seconds, nearly a full second ahead of second place.
The level of dominance only increased Saturday in the hurdle event as the defending Commonwealth Youth bronze medalist in the event bested the field by two and a half seconds to win in a time of 59.64 seconds. The victory was the fourth in Samuel’s career at the OFSAA Championships to go along with a silver and bronze. She will head to Cambridge, Massachusetts next fall to continue her studies and athletics with the Crimson of Harvard.
In the junior boys middle distance events, Ridgemont’s Joe Fast continued to make a name for himself picking up gold in the 1500m event for the second year in a row. Fast comfortably won over Mason Jones of Thousand Islands Secondary School in 4:01.37, crossing the line nearly four seconds ahead of Jones.
Fast would have gladly used some of those surplus seconds as he battled for gold in the 3000m event with Dakota Goguen from Newmarket. Unfortunately for Fast, Goguen edged him at the line, winning in 8:56.07 to a diving 8:56.09 from Fast. After just two years, Fast has upped his OFSAA haul to four gold and two silvers.
Other medal winners included Caroline Poirier who improved on her bronze from 2017 with a silver medal jump of 3.60m in the senior girls pole vault. The clearance equaled her lifetime best set last summer. As well, Andre Alie-Lamarche of Gloucester High School was a silver medalist in the open boys 2000m steeplechase with a school record time of 5 minutes 55.77 seconds.  The previous record was held by Lion Farah Abdulkarim who won OFSAA bronze in the event back in 2014.
Brandon Ovington saved his best performance of the season for Friday’s senior boy’s discus final where he launched a personal best of 50.37m on his final throw to momentarily grab a hold of gold before being knocked down to silver on the final toss of the competition.
The final medal came from David Adeleye of Ashbury who nearly equaled his personal best en route to a bronze in the junior boys 100m hurdles.
Here are the remaining results from the Lions pride:
 

With another sun filled Ottawa Race Weekend come and gone, there were many excellent performances by Lions athletes over the two days of competition highlighted by Stuart McGregor’s 3:03:43.7 marathon debut.
The three-time Paralympic Games medalist over 800m and 1500m runs under the T13 category was the single entrant in the visually impaired marathon on race weekend, but finished 103rd overall among males. With his time, McGregor now ranks fourth globally in the T13 marathon according to current International Paralympic Committee rankings.
Fellow Paralympic medalist Jason Dunkerely was also tops in his category, winning the visually impaired 10km run in a time of 39 minutes 58 seconds. The five-time Paralympic Games medalist had a commanding margin of victory, with his nearest competitor finishing some 11 minutes behind him.
Another Lions victory came from Jenna Van Vliet who captured the women’s 5km race in a time of 18 minutes 22.7 seconds. The Carleton University graduate student was joined in the top ten by high school student Skye Pellerin (6th – 19:23.8) and the club’s favourite office manager, Jessica McCrae (7th – 19:29.9). Master’s runner Liz Maguire turned in an excellent performance of 20:15.2 to finish 15th.
In the men’s 5km race, 800m specialist Sebastian Saville showed he could run with the longer distance guys, finishing 4th overall in a time of 16:01.7, just two seconds off the podium. Teammates Jay Sneddon and Alexander Maxwell finished 6th and 8th respectively.

With high school athletes from Peterborough to Hawkesbury battling their way through two days of competition at Kingston’s CaraCo Field for the vaunted trip to OFSAA, more than 40 Lions athletes emerged successful. Among the athletes moving on are six previous OFSAA medalists led by Sharelle Samuel and Joe Fast who were each double medalists a year ago.
Samuel, a senior at Ashbury Collegiate, was dominant in victory over both the 400m and 400m hurdle disciplines. The future Harvard Crimson runner smashed former Lion Bailey Lewis’ regional record in the senior girls 400m by nearly a second and a half to win in 54.59 seconds. The time also betters the IAAF World Junior standard. Samuel also set a new standard in the 400m hurdles, nearly cracking the 60 second barrier in a time of 60.09.
Joe Fast, continued to live up to his name, taking home victories in both the junior boys 1500m and 3000m distances in comfortable fashion. Fast will certainly enter his second OFSAA track and field championship has a favourite in both events as the defending midget boys 1500m champion and a two time OFSAA cross country champion.
Another medal favourite next week at OFSAA will be Louis Riel student, Caroline Poirier. The grade 12 student added 36cm to the 10 year old senior girls pole vault record with a clearance of 3.50m. The defending OFSAA bronze medalist now holds both the junior and senior marks for the east region.
List of OFSAA qualifiers in individual events. We apologize for any omissions.