With a little luck, and despite the absence of Geneviève Lalonde in the 3000m steeplechase, New Brunswick could collect a dozen medals at the Canadian Athletics Championships, which will take place until Sunday at the Claude Sports Complex -Robillard of Montreal. And as is the case every four years, the event will be used to make up the Olympic and Paralympic teams for the Paris Games.
It will be particularly interesting to see if 110m hurdles specialist Craig Thorne manages to get his ticket to the City of Lights.
The duel which is being prepared between the hero of the last Olympic Games, Damian Warner, aged 34, and Thorne, the young runner-up aged only 23, promises to be epic. And it is not said that Mark McKoy’s old Canadian record (13s08), which dates back to 1993, is not tickled or even broken.
This year, Warner achieved his best time in Götzis, Austria, on May 19 in 13.45. For the Ontarian, it is 18 hundredths of a second slower than his time of 13s27 obtained in 2015 in Edmonton.
In Thorne’s case, it was precisely in Edmonton that he achieved his best time of the year (and new provincial record), i.e. 13s48. And last Friday, a sign that the New Brunswicker is in great shape, he clocked 13s51 on the Ben-Leduc track in Montreal.
“I feel really good about the Olympic Trials,” said Thorne. My confidence continues to grow as the weeks go by and so I’m pretty excited about this opportunity.”
“Obviously I would like to win this year. But the most important thing for me is to keep my focus. And this, both in my mental and physical preparation. If I do well what I have been doing in training for the past few months, the results will come,” adds the young rising star.
That said, Warner and Thorne are not immune to a surprise, since Ontarian David Adeleye, only 22 years old and author of a 13.84 at the beginning of the month, is also on the rise.
Shot putter Samuel Bourque, from Notre-Dame-de-Kent, believes in his chances of winning a medal. But to do this, as he declared in our pages at the start of the week, “There are going to be very good throwers, including some who can throw more than 18 meters. But it’s still a competition and it always depends on whether the guys are going to have a good or bad day.”
The current provincial record holder of 16m39 would like to get as close as possible to 17 meters on Sunday afternoon.
Also watch Ryan Evans in the decathlon. The Saint-Jeannois has in its sights the provincial record of 7,040 points belonging since 2018 to Chris Robertson. The 25-year-old Evans’ personal best is 6830, achieved in June 2023. In April, he scored 6777 points at the Bryan-Clay track and field meet in Azusa, California.
“I feel good and I can’t wait to compete. The tournament promises to be fierce in the decathlon and Montreal is a great place to perform. Everything is in place for a superb competition,” believes Evans.
“My goal is to do well in each of my tests and to have fun. If I succeed, I should have a good result. It’s obvious that I would like to beat the provincial record. It’s a very good total of points, so it will be a very good achievement for me,” adds the man who could very well obtain a top-5 in the competition.
The Ontarians Cole Wilson, Matthew Fox and Philip Frank, the Quebecers Félix LeBlanc, Emanuel Désilets and Édouard Lavoie-Beaulieu, the British-Columbian Elliot Thompson and the Manitoban Max Speiser are the other men in search of a podium.
The other senior athlete well placed to get at least a top-5 is Bridget Brennan in the 400m hurdles.
Note, however, the presence of Erin Vringer in the 1500m event. The Saint-Jeannoise will be in her first real senior athletics competition and it will already be quite an achievement if she manages to qualify for the final of a race which promises to be very tough.
To think that if she had been born nine days earlier – she who was born on January 9, 2004 – it was in the M20 division that she found herself. And at the same time, she would be the big favorite to win everything. Note that she managed a time of 4min16s28 in April in California. That’s more than two seconds faster than M20 favorite Alexa Dow of Ontario.
In the M20 division, sprinter Jackson Banks (100m) and distance runner Brett King (5000m), both from Saint-Jean, will also try to achieve a top-5 finish.
Para athletes are not left out
We will also need to keep an eye on our Paralympic athletes, whether throwers Christel Robichaud (Moncton) and Rémi Ouellette (Haute Aboujagane), or even sprinter Dante Cormier (Riverview).
Unless I’m mistaken, these three athletes alone should bring home eight medals.
Robichaud, Canadian record holder in the shot put (6m70) and javelin throw (12m50) in class 56, is of course favorite. And in the discus throw, although it is his weakest event, a victory is not excluded. The gap between her and Ontario’s Tiffanny Gaudette is not that huge.
“I feel good, although I’m a little tired this morning. Fortunately, I only have light training this afternoon,” reveals Robichaud.
“I would like to beat my records in the shot put and javelin, but I think my chances will be better at the Atlantic Championships (July 27-28, in Dartmouth). I will however try to beat my personal best in the discus (17m48),” she added.
Rémi Ouellette, who will take part in the weight and discus events in class 41, has the main objective of establishing a new Canadian weight record.
“It’s simple, I want to put my name under the Canadian record officially,” he proclaims. On the disc, it would be good to establish a national record there too, but I go there more for the pleasure. We’ll see. Otherwise, I feel very good.”
“Of course I would have liked to have had a little more time to prepare, but we are all in the same boat. I think I’m at the same level right now as I was in March for Indoor Nationals. I prepared well, I am healthy and I want the Canadian record in the shot put,” says Ouellette.
As for Dante Cormier, he is the big favorite for the 200m wheelchair (class 34). However, it will be more difficult to win gold in the 100m because of Ontario’s Austin Smeenk, but he is in a good position for second place.
Christel Robichaud, rare case of ambidexterity in athletics
No matter the sport, ambidextrous athletes have always had this ability to tickle people’s imaginations. Whether it’s Monica Seles, in tennis, Kobe Bryant, in basketball, Michelle Kwan, in figure skating, Gordie Howe, in hockey, or even Ronie O’Sullivan, in snooker, all of them have in common the ability to perform skillfully on the side left and right side.
In a few years, everyone will probably know who Curaçao Island thrower Jurrangelo Cijntje is, a 20-year-old already capable of throwing rapids at over 90 miles per hour with both arms.
In athletics, however, cases are rare. There are, however, guys and girls who are able to initiate their flight in the air for a jump, from one foot or the other. They are few in number, but they do exist.
In terms of throws, on the other hand, it is much rarer. So rare that attempts to find on the Web an athlete with the gift of throwing projectiles with both arms yielded nothing. Actually, no, there is Christel Rochaud, the current Canadian record holder in the wheelchair shot put and javelin (class 56).
The strangest thing was that she discovered her ambidexterity on a whim two years ago.
Suffering from muscular problems in his left shoulder since 2014 due to an accident during a sit-ski competition, Robichaud tried his luck competing with his right arm two years ago. To her great surprise, she quickly noticed that with a little practice she would be able to defend herself very well with her “weak arm”.
“I’m left-handed and because my left shoulder hurts sometimes, I was curious to see if I could learn to throw with the other arm. I saw it as a way to extend my adventure in athletics for a few more years. When my left arm hurts too much, I can now throw with my right arm,” she says.
Of course, she still can’t throw as well as with her good arm, but the gap has continued to decrease over time.
As proof, last week she managed a throw of 6m11 in the shot put, a throw of 14m03 in the discus and a throw of 10m07 in the javelin. If she still has some scabs to eat in the javelin and the discus, where her personal marks are 12m50 and 17m48 respectively, we must admit that she is doing very well in the shot put. The difference between the two arms, in terms of distance, is 59 centimeters.
Just to give you an idea, only six girls on the world stage have managed to throw further than her with their good arm in 2024 in the 56 class.
In Montreal, however, Robichaud will compete with her left arm. Her good arm. The other girls had better watch out.
New Brunswick athletes who will compete this week at the Canadian Championships and Olympic-Paralympic Trials in Montreal:
M20 Group: Anna Somers, Sophie Dubé, Allison Dewar, Haley Angus, Jackson Banks, Francis-Charles Roussel, Nathan Rioux, Sam Richter, Brett King.
Senior group: Carys Jacobson, Shelby MacIsaac, Erin Vringer, Sophie Black, Hilary Bishop, Sierra Rodrigues, Laura Dickinson, Ivy Bialowas, Caroline Gagnon, Georgia Bernhard, Lexie Shannon, Guillaume Basque, Max Mazerolle, William Boyle, Craig Thorne, Samuel Bourque, Ryan Evans, Oyinko Akinonla.
Para group: Christel Robichaud, Rémi Ouellette, Dante Cormier.
