Bishop brilliant in homecoming
Canadian 800-metre champ tunes up for worlds by winning fourth national title
OTTAWA — The sun was beaming on Melissa Bishop on Saturday night.
Canada’s 800-metre star had the hometown crowd on its feet while claiming her fourth national title.
Bishop, who grew up in nearby Eganville and for a time trained with the Ottawa Lions — host club for the Canadian Track and Field Championships at the Terry Fox Facility — cruised to victory with a time of 2:00.26, three plus seconds ahead of silver medallist Jenna Westaway of Calgary. Lindsey Butterworth of North Vancouver placed third.
She did fall short of her own Canadian record of 1:57.02, set during her fourth-place finish at the Rio Olympics last summer, and a strong headwind kept her from breaking the two-minute mark, but that took little away from the positive mood in the stadium.
“I hadn’t been home to run in a long time,” said Bishop, who also performed a victory lap for the about 5,000 fans in the stadium. “My family and friends have been beside me for my whole career, even before I was an Olympian.” Was all of Eganville in attendance? “I don’t know, but there are a lot of them up there, in Melissa Bishop T-shirts. It feels really good.”
As happy as Bishop was to win comfortably at home, the biggest challenge this summer is the world championships in London in August.
Bishop won silver at the 2015 worlds, which came on the heels of gold medal at the Pan-Am Games in Toronto.
She has one more competition, in Monaco, before heading to London. Her goal for the world championships is obvious enough.
“A podium finish would make me very happy,” she said. “It’s about racing and showing up on the day, gearing up to that focusing on everything leading up to that. It’s addicting to be on the top of your game. You want to keep going. You want to have more.”
She acknowledges that it was tough to find motivation immediately following the Olympics.
“I trained so many years for that one day,” she said. “But it was the best run I’ve ever raced, and having had time to think about it, I’m feeling much better.”
The Olympic 800-metre final was mired in controversy, given that gold medal winner Caster Semenya has an abnormally high level of male hormones. There has also been speculation that silver medal winner Francine Niyonsaba and bronze medal winner Margaret Wambui have a similar condition.
The issue isn’t going away. Recent research commissioned by the IAAF has shown that female athletes with high levels of testosterone enjoy significant benefits in world championship competitions.
Specifically, the study — which looked at more than 1,300 athletes at the 2011 and 2013 world championships — found that women racers with high testosterone levels were 1.8 per cent faster than their opponents.
The study could lead to a further investigation by the Court of Arbitration of Sport, but Semenya is expected to compete in London.
“I guess we’re going to have to let the courts handle it,” said Bishop. “We have to do our jobs and continue competing and let the big guys take care of it. We really don’t have any control over it.”
She wasn’t interested in talking about the potential that the Olympic results could one day be overturned.
“I can’t go there yet,” Bishop said. “I have to compete at the worlds. The world isn’t changing for the world championship, so I still have to compete.”
Interestingly, only moments before Bishop’s run, Perth, Ont., native Sultana Frizell was receiving her gold medal for winning the women’s hammer throw. Frizell, who also worked out with the Ottawa Lions early in her career, has many of the same fans as Bishop.
“There’s a whole Eganville section over there. That’s awesome, with a little sprinkling of Perth and Balderson over there,” said Frizell. “I know that section.”
While Frizell was excited to win on home turf, her best throw of 66.88 metres was shy of the 71-metre standard needed to qualify for the world championships.
“It’s been a bit of struggle this year, but the further I go along this year, the more consistent I get,” Frizell said. “I think it’s just going to come down to getting into a meet and let ’er rip, really.”
Frizell says she’ll probably try to hit the standard at a meet in Toronto next week. Failing that, “I might just get on a plane, because there’s way more (competitions) in Europe right now that I can get into.”
Damian Warner, Canada’s decathlon bronze medallist from Rio, was also in action. Warner, who has already qualified for the world championships in the decathlon, focused on the 110-metre hurdles and long jump.
He won the bronze in the hurdles with a time of 13.69, finishing behind Johnathan Cabral (13.61) and Sekou Kaba (13.65) of the Ottawa Lions.
Cabral limped off the track following the race, which featured countless crashes into the hurdles.
“It’s not what I wanted, but I ran 13.69 and I almost broke every single hurdle,” Warner said with a laugh.
Warner won the long jump competition on Friday, with a best leap of 7.53 metres.