Expectation levels rise for track and field athletes

From Usain Bolt’s heir-apparent, Andre De Grasse, to a new track coming to Centennial Stadium, these are heady days for track and field in Canada on several fronts.

The Canadian championships, and qualifying trials for the 2017 IAAF world championships in London from Aug. 5 to 13, are taking place this weekend in Ottawa.

They follow Canada’s breakthrough six medals in track and field at the 2016 Rio Summer Olympic Games.

“We are not going to world events just to participate anymore, we are going there to win,” said two-time Olympic marathoner Bruce Deacon of Victoria.

Deacon, now a Prairie Inn Harriers coach, is at the national championships in Ottawa guiding several Island runners.

“There is an expectation of excellence now, and that builds on itself,” said Deacon, who ran in the 1996 Atlanta and 2000 Sydney Olympics, and won silver at the 2003 Pan Am Games.

Deacon has to look no further than his own athletes to prove his point. He coached Liam Stanley of Victoria to a silver medal last summer in the 2016 Rio Paralympics. Stanley won gold in the para-ambulatory 800 metres and silver in the 1,500 metres at the national championships this weekend in Ottawa, and is headed to the world para championships in London. Michael Barber of Oak Bay High won silver in the paraambulatory 800 metres.

Another Deacon athlete, Tyler Dozzi out of Oak Bay High, won the silver medal in the junior men’s 5,000 metres at the nationals in Ottawa.

“[Dozzi] has a bright future. He wants it. He has a hunger for it,” Deacon said. “He will be on the national senior team in a few years with an eye on the world championships, Commonwealth and Pan Am Games, and Olympics.”

Deacon also has two other runners racing at the national championships: Vlad Lyesin and Matthew Thibodeau are both coming out of Oak Bay High to run in U Sports with the Vikes at the University of Victoria.

“As a coach, I apply many of the things I learned as an athlete, and that gives my runners a leg up,” Deacon said.

“They sense I believe in them. That is important because this is a sport where success does not come overnight. You have to be patient and believe in yourself.”

Canada’s new generation of track stars need places to run and train. Centennial Stadium, on the campus of the University of Victoria, has provided such a venue for numerous Olympians over the years. So, news that the Centennial Stadium track, laid for the 1994 Commonwealth Games, will finally be replaced this summer, is rippling positively through the Canadian track community.

“It’s long overdue,” Deacon said.

Beside the Island and other Canadian Olympians who have raced and trained on the Centennial Stadium track, so have international legends such as John Carlos, Tommie Smith, John Walker, Linford Christie and Frankie Fredericks over the facility’s 50-year history.

The coming new Centennial Stadium track is reportedly part of a Canada 150 grant. Sources say an official joint announcement by the federal government and UVic is imminent. The project is expected to be completed by the end of August.

It comes after the opening of the $1.2-million training track last year at the Pacific Institute for Sport Excellence on the Camosun College Interurban campus.

PISE’s track, which has public access, is home to the Athletics Canada Western Hub national training centre and is considered an important facility in the quest to produce more Canadian medallists at international events, beginning next month in London.

Funding came from an array of public and private sources, including $250,000 from the provincial government and $154,000 from the federal Canada 150 Community Infrastructure Program.

OTTAWA — Melissa Bishop ran hard from the gun, and by 400 metres she’d opened a gap on the field that stretched back a good 10 metres. By the finish line it was 20.

The world silver medallist cruised to her fourth national 800-metre title Saturday, officially booking her spot in next month’s world championships in a foregone conclusion.

Bishop, 28, from Eganville, Ont., 11⁄2 hours drive from Ottawa, crossed in two minutes 0.26 seconds, and then did a victory lap for the Ottawa fans including a large section of fans in T-shirts bearing her name.

“It’s nice to run at home,” Bishop said. “I haven’t been home in a long time to run, and to have my family and my friends here, they’ve been beside me through this entire career, even before I was an Olympian, it means a lot.”

The field will be far more fierce at next month’s world championships in London, where she hopes to climb the podium once again in one of the sport’s more controversial events.

Saturday’s race came on the heels of a scientific paper that could change the landscape of the women’s 800 metres.

The study, funded by the IAAF and World Anti-Doping Agency and published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, found that women who produce higher-thannormal amounts of testosterone have up to a 4.5 per cent advantage over their competition on the track. The International Association of Athletics Federation plans to use the study in its appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which could potentially sideline Olympic gold medallist Caster Semenya and others.

“I guess I’m going to let the courts handle it,” Bishop said. “We’ve just got to do our jobs and continue competing, and let the big guys take care of it, we don’t really have any control over it, so we’ll see what comes out.”

The appeal will not affect this year’s world championships, where South Africa’s Semenya will be a favourite to win a third 800 title.

Bishop believes the podium is within reach in London. “I think with prime fitness, prime mental abilities and be great on the day, it’s anybody’s game,” she said.

Brandon McBride of Windsor, Ont., won the men’s 800 in 1:45.23, booking his ticket to London.

Johnathan Cabral of Peribonka, Que., won a collision-filled 110-metre hurdles race that saw the three medallists separated by less than a tenth of a second. Cabral leaned and fell hard at the line, finishing in 13.61 seconds. He had to be helped off the track.

Sekou Kaba of Ottawa was second in 13.61, while decathlete Damian Warner was third in 13.69. Warner, who won Olympic bronze last summer in Rio, opted to compete in just the hurdles and long jump — which he won Friday night — in Ottawa in preparation for the worlds, where he has a shot at gold.