WALK STARS GET OWN START
Four world-class athletes train in Vancouver and will compete in the annual Sun Run
A starter’s pistol marks the beginning of the annual Vancouver Sun Run, but for a small group of elite participants, waiting for the Walk signal at Georgia and Burrard would be just as appropriate on Sunday morning.
Four world-class race walkers will be front and centre for the 33rd-annual Sun Run. And if you want to be a world-class race walker, you want to live in Metro Vancouver.
“It’s the hotbed of race walking,” said Maurice Wilson, technical manager for road and cross-country running at B.C. Athletics. “The goal is world domination and we are well on the way to doing that.”
To back his claim, Wilson points to Evan Dunfee of Richmond winning the 50-kilometre event at the IAAF Race Walking Challenge last month in Monterrey, Mexico. Ben Thorne, who was born in Kitimat and moved to the Lower Mainland, won the 20K event.
“Canada had never won either before,” Wilson said. “And we won both on the same day.”
Scheduling has allowed the four race walkers to take part this year.
“We’ve always liked the idea of our little group doing the Sun Run,” Dunfee said. “Our schedules just didn’t allow it until this year.”
Dunfee is perhaps best known by the uninitiated as the 2016 Olympian who gracefully accepted a jury’s decision that stripped him of a bronze medal at Rio in the 50K race walk, instead of making a fuss and appealing the ruling.
He led the 50K Olympic race walk last summer at the 35K mark. He finished in fourth place, 40 seconds behind the Slovakian winner and 14 seconds out of a medal.
But Japan’s Hirooki Arai bumped Dunfee during his pass of the Canadian minutes from the line, which knocked Dunfee temporarily out of sync. Arai was disqualified and Dunfee was awarded bronze. Then, hours later, Arai was reinstated as the bronze-medal winner, a decision Dunfee said was fair.
“It’s one of those funny things, I haven’t really thought about it,” Dunfee said when asked about the episode. “I have no regrets. Hirooki and I are as good of friends as you can be without speaking each other’s language.”
Joining Dunfee and Thorne are fellow elite race walkers Inaki Gomez ( born in Mexico City, member of UBC Thunderbirds track team) and Mat Bilodeau (Vancouver via Quebec City and Calgary).
Organizers had to figure out a fair way to start the race walkers, since to start them after the elite women (8:50 a.m.) and elite men (9 a.m.) would lose them in the crowd of thousands running after.
So they’ll start with the wheelchair athletes at 8:40 a.m.
“That’s exciting,” Dunfee said. “The roads will be open and we’ll get great exposure.”
Dunfee trained for about 50 km a day while studying kinesiology at UBC, but his bloodlines don’t hurt, either. His dad Don was a national team swimmer, his mom Karen a Canada Games diver, and his great-great-uncle “Rover” (otherwise known as William Forsyth) ran in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics marathon.
That marathon had some interesting stories attached to it, including a Japanese runner who stopped midway at a party, never finished the race, and left Sweden the next morning without letting anyone know. In 1967, at 75 years of age, he was invited back to complete the marathon for a time of 54 years, eight months, six days, 32 minutes and 20.3 seconds, according to the Japan Times.
But that marathon, held on a scorching-hot day, also marked the only time a competitor — Francisco Lázaro of Portugal — died while running it.
“Rover was one of the ones who waited by the side of the course until paramedics came,” Dunfee said.
Class runs in the bloodlines, too.
FINISH LINES: While primarily known as a racewalker, Dunfee ran in and won the Fall Classic HalfMarathon at UBC last November in 70 minutes and 44 seconds. Last week he received Athletics Canada’s Fred Begley Memorial Trophy for being the 2016 off-track athlete of the year.