Niagara runner competing in Jamaica
Santiago Gaitan-Caballero representing Canada in 3,000-metre race
The story of Santiago GaitanCaballero’s first foray into the 3,000-metre run is stuff of legend.
A few years ago, Gaitan-Caballero and his Niagara Regional Athletics track teammates were competing at an indoor track and field meet at University of Toronto.
“He was late, as he usually is for practices and for meets, and missed his 1,500-m race,” Wayne Rae, his coach, recalled. “We had no idea where he was.”
Rae received a message from Gaitan-Caballero that he was running through the streets of downtown Toronto after his father’s car broke down en route to the meet.
“Finding his way there by himself at night was totally amazing,” said Rae. “It was his first ever indoor meet downtown.”
Rae explained the situation to the race director and asked if Gaitan-Caballero could enter the 3,000 m, which was taking place later in the program.
“He said, ‘No problem.’ Santiago finally arrived a few minutes before the 3,000 m and without the usual warmup routine that I have my athletes do before the race, he started and almost broke the Athletics Ontario age group record for an indoor 3,000 m,” Rae said.
“We knew from that moment on that we had someone special.”
Gaitan-Caballero will be donning red and white when he laces up for Canada this weekend. He is one of 21 male athletes named to Athletics Canada’s team for the Jamaican U18 Invitational in Kingston Saturday and Sunday.
Canada will compete in 20 track and field events during the meet.
Gaitan-Caballero is one half of Canada’s 3,000-m running team along with Evan Burke of London, Ont.
Making this team wasn’t a walk in the park for the Welland runner. In 2017, Gaitan-Caballero had an “off year” and he made significant changes to his routine.
After setting Niagara track and field records in his first year of high school, Gaitan-Caballero wasn’t satisfied with his junior season results.
“I knew I had to change something,” he said. “I’ve begun to put a lot more emphasis on training smarter and not harder. I changed my diet, training and I even worked on becoming mentally stronger, which plays a huge part in the sport.
“It’s been awesome to see how much I’ve improved over the last couple months and it goes to show that hard work really does pay off.”
In May, Gaitan-Caballero set a new senior 3,000-m record at the Zone 3 track and field championships. He posted a time of nine minutes, 10 seconds and 48 milliseconds, which was 18 seconds faster than fellow Notre Dame runner Brayden Seneca’s record from 2011.
He also nearly caught Fort Erie native Jeremy Rae’s senior 1,500-m record, set while running for Lakeshore Catholic High School in 2009, but missed it by 30 milliseconds.
Gaitan-Caballero began running cross-country in Grade 4 and finished eighth in his area meet. He enjoyed the feeling of placing in the top 10 and has tried to improve ever since.
Rae, his coach at Niagara Regional Athletics, recalled GaitanCaballero’s raw talent when he first saw him run.
“My first impression of him
when he joined NRA was that he had a lot of natural talent when it came to distance running,” said Rae. “With not much training and no spikes, he made it to OFSAA (Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations) cross country in his first year in high school.”
Gaitan-Caballero’s personal best in the 3,000 m is 8:33.61. He holds two Zone 3 midget records from 2016: the 1,500-m run
(4:27.42) and the 3,000-m (9:28.01).
“Track means so much to me,” he said. Just everything about it: the pain, the feeling of winning races, the lessons learned and all the new people you meet along the way.
“It has taught me discipline, compromise and has given me a lot of satisfaction and inner growth.”
Rae called Gaitan-Caballero a “very determined runner,” whether in training or racing.
“He always wants to beat the times the coaches set out for the workout of the day at our regular training sessions at the club,” said Rae, noting that his runner could be a bit more cautious when it comes to training as more is not necessarily better when it comes to logging extra miles.
Gaitan-Caballero recently completed Grade 11 at Notre Dame College School in Welland and is setting his sights on training and even more running through the summer.
“I have the attitude of wanting to be the best there is, I’ll do anything — and everything — I can to accomplish that,” he said. “I’ll run at 1 a.m. if I have to. I just know that if I can get through these runs, I’ll feel amazing and feel a lot stronger mentally and physically than I was before.
“That’s what fuels me, knowing that I’m better than I was yesterday.”