Ottawa selected for 2017/2018 national championships

Canada’s best athletes will be heading back to Ottawa. The 2017 and 2018 Canadian track and field championships have been awarded to Ottawa, Athletics Canada announced on Thursday.

The event, which will host both the junior and senior championships, is set to be hosted at the Terry Fox Athletic Facility. In past years the junior and senior championships have been held at different venues but they will now be held as a single event, starting next year in Edmonton.

“We are very excited to be in Ottawa for the 2017 and 2018 edition of the championships,” said Athletics Canada CEO Rob Guy. “It’s fitting to be in the nation’s capital to help celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday. The City of Ottawa, Ottawa Tourism and the Ottawa Lions Track and Field Club will help us put on a great competition for 1,500 athletes, and a great show for Ottawa sport fans.”

The last time Ottawa hosted the national track and field championships was in 2006, although the announcement this week was made over the backdrop of the Pan American Combined Events Cup, an international heptathlon and decathlon championship, taking part at Terry Fox Athletic Facility.

Starting next summer, when the championships move from Moncton, N.B., where they were held in 2013 and 2014, to Edmonton where they will be hosted in 2015 and 2016.

Canada will turn 150 in 2017 and Ottawa has been bidding on many sport and cultural events in preparation of making the nation’s capital a hot spot for the summer celebrations.

If selection criteria remain similar to how they are today, the 2017 championships will be used as a trials to represent Canada at that summer’s world championship. The 2018 event will also likely be used to select that summer’s Commonwealth Games team, among other teams.

Other cities who put in bids for the championships were Sainte Thérèse, Que., Abbotsford, B.C., and London, Ont.