Edmonton Track Classic gets rave reviews
In the world of athletics, this city’s young track meet is currently No. 13, which came as fabulous news on Sunday to Edmonton International Track Classic meet director Peter Ogilvie.
After attracting a deep field of international track and field stars, then watching them perform at a high level at Foote Field on Saturday, Ogilvie was weary but ecstatic.
“It was mission accomplished for us,” Ogilvie said of the event, which attracted an estimated 3,000 spectators.
“We knew we had a good meet, we knew we had the depth.”
The international rankings that came out Sunday placed Edmonton’s four-year-old meet behind eight events on the Diamond League, the IAAF’s major-league circuit, and shy of four competitions on the World Challenge circuit, the series that Ogilvie and Edmonton aspire to join.
In 2012, when the local meet’s big draw was Jamaican sprinter Yohan Blake, the reigning world titleholder in the 100 metres, Edmonton ranked 27th following the meet. It finished the year ranked 40th.
The ratings are fluid, as they are based on the quality of competition a meet recruits, as well as how that quality competition actually performs at the meet.
So far this season, though, Edmonton is ahead of six of the eight World Challenge meets that have been held. Only the Kingston Jamaica International Invitational and the Ostrava (Czech Republic) Golden Spike meets are rated higher than Edmonton on the IAAF rankings.
There are seven other World Challenge meets on the 2013 calendar.
So, despite having both Blake and Veronica Campbell-Brown, the top Jamaican female sprinter, withdraw from the Edmonton meet, the talent that did come here to perform was an impressive array. More important, the athletes did their job.
Jamaican sprinter Walter Weir, for example, won the 200 metres in 19.90 seconds, a first-class time at any meet.
Jason Young, also of Jamaica, was second in 19.96. Shalonda Solomon of the United States won the women’s 200 metres in 22.41, the third-fastest time so far this year. That race was run before the wind picked up, also, so it was a legal time.
In the women’s 100-metre hurdles, five of the athletes ran sub-13-second times, albeit with a tailwind that would not make any of the times official for national or international records.
Flamboyant U.S. hurdler Lolo Jones won that race in 12.49, out-leaning Edmonton’s Angela Whyte, who finished in 12.52. Canada’s Jessica Zelinka, who moved from Calgary to Connecticut this year, was fourth in 12.66, her best time this season.
Other winners on Saturday included Kamloops, B.C. shot putter Dylan Armstrong, whose best effort was 20.47 metres; Kenyan runner Paul Kipsiele Koech, who won the 3,000-metre steeplechase in eight minutes, 16.71 seconds; and U.S. half-miler Nick Symmonds, who won the 800 metres in 1:44.56, out-duelling countryman Duane Solomon, who crossed in 1:44.91.
The athletes unanimously lauded the meet for being wellorganized. Coming a week following the national championships in Jamaica, Canada and the United States, it is wellpositioned as a tune-up meet for athletes who have qualified for the World Championships in Athletics in Moscow from Aug. 10-18.
The Edmonton meet has clearly gained some profile by way of athlete-to-athlete word-of-mouth, all of which pleases Ogilvie. Both in person and via Twitter as the athletes left Edmonton, they praised the meet’s competitive quality, as well as the way they are treated, which is important.
“By far, we are the best in the world in terms of social media,” Ogilvie said. “I don’t think there has been a (comparable) buzz at any other meet.”
None of this would be lost on the IAAF delegate who attended the meet as an observer, to evaluate whether it should be considered for inclusion on the 15-stop World Challenge series. That number is finite, so for Edmonton to be added, a meet in another city would have to be dropped.
The EITC depends on grants from the City of Edmonton, from the province of Alberta and Sport Canada, among others, and the stakeholders were on hand to see what was the most successful meet yet held in the event’s short history.
Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel was there, as was MLA Steve Young and Heather Klimchuk, the Alberta Minister for Culture and Community Spirit. So was Coun. Don Iveson, a declared candidate for mayor in the October civic election.
“World class is an (Edmonton) cliche,” Iveson posted on Twitter on Saturday. “But Athletics Alberta did host some truly world-class performances at (Foote Field) today.”
Ogilvie said securing funding is “always a challenge,” not to mention a year-to-year issue for the meet. Still, it’s a lot easier to go asking for grants fuelled by success, which by most measures, this year’s meet clearly was.
Ogilvie acknowledged the meet still needs to “tighten up stuff,” notably its media facilities, non-existent really, beyond providing unparalleled mixed zone access to the athletes, who were generous with their stories and time.
Asked whether he believed the Edmonton meet could achieve World Challenge status as early as the 2014 season, Ogilvie said: “Absolutely. That’s a conversation that we’re having right now.”
That outcome won’t be known until sometime in the fall. And Ogilvie’s enthusiasm may outstrip the IAAF’s slowmoving processes. But the meet is now on the world map. Whether it finds a spot on the World Challenge calendar may just be a matter of time.