This past weekend the Canada Summer Games trials for Team Ontario took place at Toronto Track and Field Centre. Athletes from around Ontario came to compete in hopes of making the final team for the Canada Summer Games. With that being said, there were some highlight performances from athletes who have yet again demonstrated their extraordinary competitiveness and hard work.
This year’s trials were specifically important because it is the first fully inclusive qualifier for the Canada Summer Games. With that being said, Tai Young had a great overall weekend! He finished 1st in the men’s 100m and 400m dash wheelchair. Women’s discus wheelchair saw a great performance by Tiffany Gaudette and Joanne lee who are both part of cruiser sports track club. Cruiser sports also dominated Men’s shot put with Aristotle Domingo and Ryan Bennett coming in 1st and 2nd place.
Robyn Larkan, was an athlete that was mentioned in our preview to watch out for at this event. Robyn competed in the Women’s 100m open and finished 1st in the preliminaries and 1st in the finals with a time of 11.68. It was a down to the wire race as Kristina Vincic from the speed academy finished shortly behind Robyn. The Men’s 100m race also saw very steep competition. Desmond Fraser, who was also mentioned in the preview article, as always showed up to win, finishing 1st in his finals heat with a time of 10.60 placing 11th overall. Nicholas Williams also finished 1st in his finals heat with a speedy time of 10.51 finishing 7th overall just narrowly missing out on Team Ontario. We mentioned in the preview that the 200M race for both men and women would be an exciting one to watch! Von Davis from Royal City AC came in 1st place overall with a huge PB with a time of 24.07! It should also be mentioned that Davis finished 4th in the 100m finals so this was a redemption for her.
Hans Lafleur once again proves his jumping ability by finishing 1st in the Men’s open high jump with a jump of 2.10m. As mentioned in our preview it was going to be a head to head competition with Thomas Becker who finished 2nd with a jump of 2.05m. Women’s long jump saw another head to head competition as top jumpers Leah Jones and Trinity Shadd-Ceres were both trying to compete for 1st place and that coveted Team Ontario spot. Ultimately, it was Shadd- Ceres who was able to come out on top with a jump of 6.35m. In Women’s triple jump it was Peace Omonzane who was highlighted in our preview article and finished in 1st place with a jump of 12.46, once again dominating the event.
The men’s 800m was a tight race but Alec Purnell, a top athlete in this event pulled through to finish in 1st place with a time of 1:49:33 and Michael Peterson followed shortly after. It should be noted that both Michael and Alec are both part of Royal city AC track club so they should be very proud with how they represented their club!
This year’s trials were specifically important because it is the first fully inclusive qualifier for the Canada Summer Games. With that being said, Tai Young had a great overall weekend! He finished 1st in the men’s 100m and 400m dash wheelchair. Women’s discus wheelchair saw a great performance by Tiffany Gaudette and Joanne lee who are both part of cruiser sports track club. Cruiser sports also dominated Men’s shot put with Aristotle Domingo and Ryan Bennett coming in 1st and 2nd place. For the first time ever we had our Special Olympic athletes try their hand at qualifying for Canada Summer Games. In the Special Olympic 100m final Owen Konkle secures his team Ontario berth by finishing in first place at the trials with a time of 11.94s. Shannon Swinson also had herself a great day by securing the top spot in both the Special Olympics 200m and 100m dash. These two athletes will surely be ones to watch as they look to represent team Ontario at this years games in August.
Overall, as expected it was a wonderful weekend of track and field. Every athlete regardless of what place they came in should be extremely proud for coming out and competing. Linked below is the list of athletes who have been selected to be part of team Ontario’s Canada Summer Games team.
Team Ontario Selection
