Rory Linkletter and wife announce they’re expecting
One of Canada's fastest young runners is going to be a dad
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Photo: jill.linkletter
Over the weekend, Rory Linkletter and his wife Jill announced that they’re expecting their first child later this year. The couple, who have been married for almost two and a half years, posted the news to Twitter and Instagram, writing that they will be “adding to the Linkletter fam this July.” Linkletter is coming off a stellar season, and while July 2021 was already marked in his calendar as an important month as he works toward qualifying for his first Olympic team, he now has even more reason to look forward to the summer.
CALL. ME. PAPA. pic.twitter.com/LNWcCQWcJV
— Rory Linkletter (@ThePapaLinks) January 8, 2021
While 2020 was a difficult and strange year for everyone, Linkletter made the most of the few racing opportunities that he got. He opened the year with a blazing-fast result at the Houston Half Marathon, his debut at the distance, posting a 1:01:44. This is the second-fastest half-marathon in Canadian history, and Linkletter now sits just 16 seconds off Jeff Schiebler‘s national record of 1:01:28.
RELATED: The Rundown ft. half-marathon stud Rory Linkletter
After the pandemic hit, Linkletter only raced five more times, including another half-marathon (he ran 1:02:37) and the second marathon of his career at The Marathon Project in Arizona. He fell short of his ultimate goal of running the Olympic standard of 2:11:30 in Arizona, but his 2:12:54 finish was still a massive improvement on his 2:16:42 debut in 2019. Moving forward, Linkletter certainly looks capable of running faster, but we’re willing to bet that Olympic qualification and everything else running-related is now secondary for the father-to-be.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CJzI_19BYb7/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
The Linkletters’ news comes just one month after American marathoner Aliphine Tuliamuk announced that she is expecting her own firstborn in February. Tuliamuk, who won the 2020 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials and has a spot booked for the Tokyo Games, runs with Linkletter on the NAZ Elite squad in Arizona.
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