Race for the Pan Am Games closes

Potential Athletics team filled with surprise runners having a breakthrough year

Sunday was the deadline for Pan Am Games qualification, meaning today we have a pretty good understanding of who will be representing Canada in Toronto come July.

There were lots of results from different meets over the weekend, including an impressive 1:59.94 result in the Portland Track Festival women’s 800m by Fiona Benson to hold onto her top spot in the national rankings.

Benson finished in the top spot, two places ahead of 2012 Olympian Melissa Bishop, who ran 2:00.53. If both wish to compete, they will be representing Canada in Toronto. Both times are also under the 2:01 world championship standard for Canadian women in the 800m.

In the women’s 1,500m, Nicole Sifuentes won the Ontario championships in Windsor, running 4:07.38. In Portland, Ore., Sasha Gollish finished second in 4:07:47. The two times are the fastest in the country. Both athletes have expressed interests in competing in the Games

Jessica O’Connell’s 15:06 is the top women’s 5,000m time and she will be representing Canada. The second-fastest is Nicole Sifuentes’s 15:19, though she has noted she likely will focus on the 1,500m this year, opening up a spot for Rachel Cliff to race. Cliff ran 15:33:15 at Stanford University in early May.

Natasha Wodak and Lanni Marchant are set to compete in the 10,000m, qualifying with their 31:41.59 and 31:46.94 results from Stanford.

The women’s 3,000m steeplechase team will likely be Geneviève Lalonde, who ran the second-fastest time in Canadian history on Friday, 9:35:69, at the Diamond League race in New York, and national record-holder Jessica Furlan, who ran 9:39.20 in May.

In the men’s 800m, the two top times are Brandon McBride’s 1:45:87 from May 16 and Anthony Romaniw’s 1:46:58 from two days earlier. Both raced over the weekend but neither bettered their previous marks. McBride, in attempting to defend his NCAA title from 2014, finished sixth in a slow, tactical race.

Nathan Brannen and Charles Philibert-Thiboutot are the two top athletes in the men’s 1,500m. Brannen’s time is from a late-May race in 3:37:68. Philibert-Thiboutot’s 3:38.32 is a split time from an impressive performance in last week’s Dream Mile in Oslo, Norway.

The 5,000m is a bit more up in the air. Matt Hughes ran 13:19.56, the fastest time by a Canadian this year, though his main event is the 3,000m steeplechase. Second-ranked is Mohammed Ahmed who ran 13:20.67, one one-hundredth ahead of Cam Levins’ 13:20.68 win Sunday night in Portland.

Matt Hughes also holds Canada’s top steeplechase time, ahead of Alex Genest. Taylor Milne sits in third.

Cam Levins has the 10,000m locked up, running the Canadian record (27:07.51) last month at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Ore. Mo Ahmed has the second fastest time (27:46.90), and both have expressed a desire to represent Canada at this distance.

The Games will take place between July 10 and 26. The track and field events will be held at the new Pan Am and Parapan Am Athletics Stadium on the York University campus between July 18 and 26.