Scaled-down meet subs for cancelled track Classic

Losing the Victoria and Edmonton stops in the National Track League this year, due to financial constraints, created a huge hole for Western Canadian athletes right in the middle of track and field season.

But organizers have managed to scrape together a meet tonight at Centennial Stadium, the date originally scheduled for the cancelled 29th NTL Victoria Track and Field Classic.

It will feature only the 800 and 1,500 metres, but it is welcomed by those middle-distance athletes preparing for the Canadian trials July 6-9 in Ottawa that will decide the national teams for this summer’s 2017 IAAF world track and field championships in London and World University Games in Taiwan.

The meet tonight runs 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. and admission is free.

The meet will be put to good use by the likes of Jess O’Connell of Calgary and Cole Peterson of Victoria. The 28-year-old O’Connell has represented Canada in the 2016 Rio Olympics, 2015 Toronto Pan Am Games and 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games and has reached the qualifying standard in the 5,000 metres for the 2017 worlds in London.

O’Connell runs the 800 and 1,500 as speed work.

“You can’t replicate meet conditions in practice,” she said, of the value of tonight’s event.

“I’ve raced in Victoria so many times and am looking forward to another opportunity,” said O’Connell, who has her masters degree in exercise physiology.

Past Victoria meets, much bigger NTL affairs, helped O’Connell reach her goals.

“Competing in the Rio Olympics was a larger-than-life experience and showed me how good the best runners are, and what I need to do to go forward,” said the former NCAA West Virginia Mountaineer.

The 23-year-old Peterson ran a personal best of 3:43.63 in the men’s 1,500 metres this spring at Occidental College in California to make qualifying standard for the World University Games.

O’Connell must now place in the top three of the women’s 5,000 metres at nationals and Peterson in the top two of the men’s 1,500 to stamp their respective tickets to London and Taiwan. They, and numerous other runners, will certainly make good use of the tune-up meet at Centennial Stadium.

“It was disappointing to lose the NTL meet, but we hope it’s only a one-year absence,” said Peterson. But he will still get in a run as he pursues his season goal of the 2017 World University Games. Peterson has gone across town from the University of Victoria to the Athletics Canada Western Training Hub at PISE on the Camosun College Interurban Campus.

“It was such a seamless transition because the Western Hub and UVic programs work together a lot,” he said.

The Canada West conference track athlete of the year, and winner of two gold medals at the U Sports national championships, Peterson was named winner this season of the 2016-17 President’s Cup for the UVic athlete best combining academic and athletic achievement.

Despite using up his five years of Vikes eligibility, Peterson still spends a lot of time on campus working on his masters degree in computer science, with a specialty in machine learning. The native of Edmonton has structured a dual path in academics and athletics.

“School still gives me a lot of flexibility for training,” said Peterson, who was in Flagstaff this year with the Athletics Canada Western Hub’s annual Arizona training camp.