A front-row seat to ‘a golden age’
Edmonton aims to keep hosting top track talent
Local fans previewed Canada’s young track and field stars this summer at the national championships and it will be an elite athletics encore next July when Shawn Barber, Andre De Grasse, Melissa Bishop et al return to the University of Alberta’s Foote Field for the 2016 Olympic trials.
Canada won an unprecedented eight medals, including gold for pole vaulter Barber and high jumper Derek Drouin, at the just-completed IAAF World Championships in Athletics at Beijing. This country’s emerging track team of twentysomething talents is poised for similarly impressive results at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
“We have the best crop of young talent I have ever seen, in fact the best (Canadian) crop that has ever been in the sport,” said Peter Ogilvie, meet director of Edmonton’s TrackTown Classic. “We saw that with the performances at the Pan American Games (in Toronto) and at the world championships.
“It’s an exciting time, it’s is the golden age of athletics for Canada.”
When you consider that Canada won zero able-bodied medals at the 2001 world championships at Commonwealth Stadium, bringing eight medals back home and finishing seventh overall in the medal table is a stunning achievement. As recently as the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, this country won a single medal — Drouin’s high jump bronze.
In reality, the transformation has been occurring over the last 10-12 years. Ogilvie, who deserves some sort of medal himself for running three major track meets in 30 days in July, wants to showcase these glittering talents for years to come in Edmonton.
Not only that, Ogilvie has a 10-year vision to do just that, from 2014-24.
Ogilvie’s larger challenge will be to keep that momentum going in the years to follow. How to replace, in selected years, the Pan-American junior track and field championships, a one-off this summer, and the Canadian track and field championships, which conclude their two-year run here in 2016?
“We are looking at post-2016, at 2017 with indoor and an outdoor Grand Prix meets,” Ogilvie said. “We’re looking at bidding at other major events coming down the pipeline, too.”
The TrackTown Classic has carved out a respected niche for itself as one of the top 30 one-day track meets in the world. Ogilvie would like to see the competition be included on the World Challenge circuit and, down the road, the Diamond League, track and field’s major league.
“We need big events to help us keep our community and our volunteer pool and the engagement of the sport here in the city,” said Ogilvie, mindful of track and field’s niche status in Edmonton. “If we have a lull for a year or two, that would be detrimental to the progress of what we’ve been doing over the last three or four years. We need to ride that wave after 2016, absolutely.
“Make no mistake about it, we will definitely put in another bid to host the 2020 Olympic trials and the 2019 world championships (trials),” Ogilvie said, noting the 2017 and 2018 national championships will be held in Ottawa.
One of Ogilvie’s goals is to make sure Edmonton, branded as TrackTown Canada, is seen as the regular home of the Olympic trials in the same way that Eugene, Ore., TrackTown USA, is regarded the home of athletics in the United States.
Ogilvie said the 10-year vision does not include a plan to submit another bid to play host to the world championships. The idea is to build slowly and carefully on the foundation that includes several successful iterations of the TrackTown Classic, this summer’s tour de force staging of three major meets in a month’s time, and the extraordinary asset of a cadre of twentysomething Canadian track and field stars to sell to the public.
Included on Ogilvie’s radar would be the world indoor championships, the world junior championships and the world youth championships. Another option would be bidding to play host to the NACAC (North America, Central America and Caribbean Athletic Association) senior championships in 2018.
That’s a new event, held in Costa Rica this summer, that track people hope will grow to become an important regional event, similar to the European track and field championship.
All of this will unfold, if it does, in partnership with the City of Edmonton. Ogilvie will meet with city representatives in the next few weeks to review the good and the bad of this summer’s events and to solidify future plans. The strength of Canada’s team can only enhance the planning for future events.
There is nothing like a group of local or national sports heroes to build a long-term program around. The likes of Barber, Drouin, 800-metre silver medallist Bishop, heptathlete Brianne Theisen-Eaton and decathlete Damian Warner, who both won silver in Beijing and 20-year-old sprinter De Grasse, who capped an extraordinary breakout season by winning double bronze in the 100 metres and the 4x100m relay.
“Success breeds success,” Ogivlie said. “So you’re going to see how these athletes influence the younger crop of juniors and youth that we have coming up the pipeline.”
Ogilvie wants to ensure the talent keeps flowing through the pipeline in Edmonton for many years yet. jmackinnon@ edmontonjournal.com Twitter.com/rjmackinnon