Toronto International Track & Field Games

Leading up to the London 2012 Games, we had a chance in Toronto to see some of our Olympians compete in the Toronto International Track & Field Games on July 11th.

The men's 100m race consisted of three members of the 4x100 relay for London 2012.  Justyn Warner, Seyi Smith and Gavin Smellie.

Bruny Surin (white shirt) presented the sprinters with their medals.

The women's 800m race was won by Melissa Bishop followed by Jessica Smith:

The men's 800m was won by Geoff Harris.

Later in the evening, Geoff ran the first couple of laps of the 1500m then Nate Brennan won the race.  It was starting to get dark during this race, so this is the only photo that turned out.

Jenna Martin was our Olympian running in the 400m.

It was also an opportunity to see some up and coming athletes and some events that I hadn't seen before, like the pole vault.

The men's 110m hurdles featured Olympic decathlete Damian Warner in lane 5 who won the race.

The main event, named after Randy Starkman was the 100m women's hurdles.  With such great depth in Canada, we have five women who could represent us in London 2012.  Unfortunately we could only send three and two of them were in this race:  Phylicia George and Nikita Holder (lanes 4 and 5).  Racing against them are past Olympians Perdita Felicien and Priscilla Lopes-Schliep (lanes 3 and 6).

The crowd was standing so my visibility was obstructed.  Nikita Holder won the race.

After the race, Nikita Holder and fiance Justyn Warner shared a photo op on the podium.

Later, current and past Olympians signed autographs and encouraged young runners 

to follow their dreams.

 Phylicia George

Perdita Felicien

Priscilla Lopes-Schliep

It was an exciting evening of racing that even had some excitement in the stands with Jamaican gold medallist Asafa Powell (2008 4x100m relay) who spent most of the evening signing autographs and posing for photos once it was announced he was in the crowd.