The World Athletics Continental Tour stopped in Guelph, Ont., on Tuesday for the 2024 Royal City Inferno. With many Canadian Olympic hopefuls competing, two sprinters, Lauren Gale and Zoe Sherar, achieved huge personal bests and met the Olympic standard in the women’s 400m.
Gale finished second in the women’s 400m with a new personal best time of 50.47 seconds, just behind American Quanera Hayes, who edged out Gale at the line with a season’s best and meet record of 50.44. Hayes finished seventh at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics in the women’s 400m event. Finishing behind Gale was Toronto’s Sherar, who lowered her personal best to 50.79 seconds, which was also under the Olympic standard of 50.95 seconds. Sherar has now run personal bests in four of her last five 400m races.
Sherar and Gale can likely secure their spots on the Canadian Olympic team for Paris 2024 with a top-three finish at the Bell Canadian Olympic Trials at the end of June in Montreal.
Gale has had a breakout season on the track, setting a new Canadian 300m record of 36.53 seconds two weeks ago in Norway. The national women’s 400m record of 49.91 seconds is one of the longest-standing records in Canadian track and field. It was set by two-time Olympic silver medallist Marita Payne at the 1984 Olympic Games and was later equalled by Jillian Richardson four years later in Seoul.
The women’s 400m in Canada has great depth of talent, with five women ranked inside the top 100 in the event, according to the World Athletics rankings. Earlier this year, at World Relays in the Bahamas, the Canadian women’s 4x400m relay team won bronze, announcing themselves as medal contenders for Paris.
Two men go under 10 seconds at Inferno 100m
The warm conditions at the Royal City Inferno brought some quick times in the sprint events. In the men’s 100m final, Nigeria’s Usheoritse Itsekiri and Ontario sprinter Eliezer Adjibi finished first and second, recording sub-10-second times of 9.97 and 9.98 seconds, respectively. Upon review, their times were deemed wind-aided (+2.1 m/s) by the closest of margins (the legal wind limit for 100m and 200m events is +2.0 m/s). Any wind reading over +2.0 metres per second is considered wind-aided.
Adjibi is an up-and-coming Canadian sprint star from Ottawa. In 2022, he won the 100m at the Canada Summer Games while competing for his home province of Ontario. The 23-year-old ran his career personal best of 10.04 seconds in the 100m heats at the Royal City Inferno, marking it the third-fastest 100m time by a Canadian sprinter this year.
For full results from the 2024 Royal City Inferno, check here.
