Nanoose Bay high-jumper Michael Mason, heading to his third Olympics, and 34-year-old Victoria runner Hilary Stellingwerff, who qualified for her second, both proved they have plenty left in the tank as Canada’s track and field team for the 2016 Rio Summer Games was named Monday.
Defending world champion-Derek Drouin of Sarnia, Ont., won the men’s high jump title at the Canadian Olympic trials over the weekend in Edmonton with a leap of 2.30 metres. Mason, as he has been so often in his career, was second to Drouin at 2.23 metres. That was enough, however, as both jumpers leaped to Rio.
Mason, a graduate from Ballenas Secondary in Parksville, won silver at the 2015 Toronto Pan Am Games and bronze at the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games after making the final at the 2012 London Olympics. Drouin was gold medallist in Toronto and Glasgow and bronze medallist in London.
“Mike and I get along incredibly well and are so comfortable and supportive around each other,” Drouin said, when he also bested Mason on the Islander’s home soil last month in winning the Victoria International Track Classic at Centennial Stadium.
Meanwhile, Stellingwerff gave birth to son Theo, now two, following the 2012 London Olympics. She also began pursuing her coaching career as assistant to Brent Fougner with the University of Victoria Vikes running team. Despite her increasingly hectic life as mother and coach, she also knew she had more to give on the track.
“Running fast and staying fresh and hungry is the priority,” she said, of her year’s goal.
“Brent [Fougner] was open-minded about it. It’s a balancing act.”
Stellingwerff clinched one of the three Canadian spots in the women’s 1,500 metres for Rio at the trials over the weekend, along with Gabriella Stafford and Nicole Sifuentes.
Stellingwerff and Sifuentes were both semifinalists in the 1,500 at the London Olympics. But since then, six of the runners in the 12-runner 2012 Olympic final have been nabbed for using performance-enhancing drugs, meaning both Canadian runners would have been in the Olympic final with those six out of the mix.
Heather Steacy, who trains at the Lambrick Park Secondary throwing cage, won the women’s hammer throw in the trials at 69.17 metres and is also headed to Rio. It’s a family affair. She is the sister-in-law of Ashley Steacy, who is preparing for the Rio Olympics as part of the Langford-based world No. 3 Canadian women’s rugby sevens team.
“We see each other more around Victoria than we did in [their hometown] Lethbridge,” Heather Steacy quipped.
Jim Steacy, Heather’s brother and Ashley’s brother-in-law, was twice a Summer Games hammer thrower to make three Olympians in the family.
Two-time Olympian Sultana Frizell, who is Heather Steacy’s training partner in Victoria, was second in the hammer over the weekend at the trials with 69.14 metres but did not reach standard and will not be going to Rio. The process is as brutally stark as that.
But renewal is always on-going and the team of tomorrow is starting to form. Sam Willett of the Pacific Athletics Club in Victoria, who trains with Steacy and Frizell, won the national junior men’s hammer title at the trials in Edmonton with a throw of 64.66 metres.
Meanwhile, almost as notable as who was named Monday to the Olympic team was who was not. Cam Levins from Black Creek, the Canadian record holder in the 10,000 metres and 2014 Commonwealth Games bronze medallist, has been left off the team and will miss the Rio Games. The G.P. Vanier Secondary graduate made both the 5,000- and 10,000-metre finals in his Olympic debut at London in 2012.
“It will be sad to miss the Olympics . . . it will be disappointing,” Levins told a media scrum during the Canadian trials in Edmonton.
The Islander’s problems stemmed from a recurring ankle injury from last year’s national trials for the world championships.
Levins faded to seventh in the 5,000 metres at the trials in Edmonton. There are no selection trials for the 10,000 metres. Levins could have been named for that distance for Rio if the national team coaches believed he would be healthy and race fit in time for the Olympics. They clearly did not think that would be the case.
Even without Levins, much is expected of this rising and potentially potent 65-member Canadian track and field team in Rio. This is after a dry patch in which Canada won no medals in the sport at the 2004 Athens and 2008 Beijing Olympics and Drouin’s lone bronze at London in 2012. But last year’s explosive breakthrough at the 2015 world championships in the Bird’s Nest in Beijing included gold medals by Drouin, Shawn Barber in the pole vault, silver medals from Melissa Bishop in the 800 metres, Brianne Theisen-Eaton in the heptathlon and Damian Warner in the decathlon and bronze medals from Benjamin Thorne in the 20K race walk and the high-profile Andre De Grasse in the 100 metres and also with the 4x100 relay team.
“It’s exciting to watch this Canadian team and hopefully interest in our sport grow across the country,” Drouin said.
