On Sunday on the Canadian Half Marathon Championships, held as a part of the 2024 Manitoba Marathon in Winnipeg, Vancouver’s Natasha Wodak discovered herself again on high of the rostrum after a difficult spring, beating a loaded girls’s discipline in 1:12:56. On the boys’s aspect, Canadian document holder Cam Levins gained the race for the third consecutive yr, in preparation for the Paris 2024 Olympic marathon.
Levins wins his third straight title
The race started in cool situations (17 C) with 95 per cent humidity, making for slower-than-usual instances on the usually quick and flat Winnipeg course. Levins’s successful time of 64:23 was his slowest of his three victories, however nonetheless sufficient to interrupt the tape forward of Vancouver’s Thomas Nobbs (66:15) and Winnipeg’s personal Sam Vincent (66:55).
Final yr, Levins set the course document of 61:41. “I do know the course just like the again of my hand now,” Levins mentioned in a post-race interview with the Winnipeg Free Press. “It’s an actual pleasant environment. I’m glad coming again yr after yr right here.”
Levins is certainly one of six Canadian athletes who obtained an early nomination to the Paris 2024 staff. He’ll symbolize Crew Canada within the males’s marathon alongside Calgary’s Rory Linkletter, aiming to contend for a medal. He was near a medal in Eugene two years in the past, the place he completed fourth.
Wodak wins in Winnipeg
In a loaded girls’s championship discipline that includes 4 Olympians, Wodak emerged victorious, ending 13 seconds forward of Malindi Elmore to win her first nationwide title of 2024. “I shocked myself with an excellent race,” Wodak wrote on social media. “I didn’t suppose I used to be going to win, so I’m very glad about that.”
Wodak talked about she got here down with a chilly the week earlier than the race, leaving her unsure about her efficiency. In a post-race interview with the Winnipeg Free Press, she mentioned the win was the increase she wanted after falling wanting qualifying for the Paris Olympics earlier this spring.
Elmore, who would be the solely Canadian girl competing within the Paris 2024 girls’s marathon, secured second place in 1:13:09. Anne-Marie Comeau, a former Nordic skier for Crew Canada from St-Ferréol-les-Neiges, Que., completed third in 1:15:20.
Like Levins, Elmore used the Canadian Half Marathon Championships as a preparation race for Paris. This will probably be her third Olympic Video games. She first competed for Canada in Athens 2004 over 1,500m, then retired from skilled operating in 2012. She made a comeback in 2019 and certified for the Tokyo 2020 Video games within the girls’s marathon, the place she achieved a top-10 end.
For full outcomes from the Manitoba Marathon weekend, test right here.
