Honour Roll
The future looks bright once again for Canadian sprinters
Myles Misener-Daley
Myles Misener-Daley of Hamilton burst onto the scene i n 2017 when he won all three f lat-sprints at the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations ( ofsaa) Championships. The 100m, 200m and 400m champion from 2017 came back even stronger in the 2018 season, winning at the same three distances and capping it off with a Canadian U18 400m record of 45.99.
After ofsaa, he went on to qualify for both the Jamaica U18 Invitational and the World Junior Championships. At the World Junior Championships, Misener-Daley was the youngest competitor in the final where he placed seventh.
Misener-Daley is part of a bigger and promising trend in Canadian sprinting. After the 1996 4x100m relay gold medal team, Canada had entered a bit of a sprinting drought. Enter Andre De Grasse. De Grasse inspired a younger generation of Canadian runners to think bigger and reach higher – he raised the bar. Since De Grasse’s success, other Canadians have stepped up to the starting line, including 200m star Aaron Brown, who was De Grasse’s teammate on the bronze medal winning 4x100m relay team at the Rio Olympics. Brown went sub-20 seconds this summer in the 200m and made his mark on the Diamond League circuit.
Misener-Daley has watched all of this and taken note. The grade 11 student says that he’s always learning, and that De Grasse has been a huge inf luence on his running thus far: “Andre has been a huge role model. Seeing a Canadian become so successful in the sport makes me want to pursue the same path, and work just as hard to achieve the same greatness.”
Misener-Daley started running in elementary school and quickly excelled at it. Since he was consistently winning at his elementary school, his parents brought him to the Hamilton Olympic Club to see if he had potential beyond the school yard.
Turns out the Canadian record holder did. While many teens his age have dreams of qualifying for the Olympics, 2020 Olympic qualification is a realistic goal for this grade 11 student. “The most important aspect of my training is understanding that I get out what I put in. I dream to be one of Canada’s top runners, and to do that, I know I have to work hard. That pushes me every day to go harder and become better than I was the day before,” MisenerDaley says.— CR