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 ladies’s area in 1:12:56. On the lads’s facet, Canadian file holder Cam Levins received 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 circumstances (17 C) with 95 per cent humidity, making for slower-than-usual instances on the sometimes 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 file of 61:41. “I do know the course just like the again of my hand now,” Levins stated in a post-race interview with the Winnipeg Free Press. “It’s an actual pleasant ambiance. I’m completely happy coming again yr after yr right here.”
Levins is one in all six Canadian athletes who obtained an early nomination to the Paris 2024 staff. He’ll symbolize Staff 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 ladies’s championship area 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 ideal race,” Wodak wrote on social media. “I didn’t assume I used to be going to win, so I’m very completely happy 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 stated the win was the enhance she wanted after falling in need of qualifying for the Paris Olympics earlier this spring.
Elmore, who would be the solely Canadian lady competing within the Paris 2024 ladies’s marathon, secured second place in 1:13:09. Anne-Marie Comeau, a former Nordic skier for Staff 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 might be her third Olympic Video games. She first competed for Canada in Athens 2004 over 1,500m, then retired from skilled working in 2012. She made a comeback in 2019 and certified for the Tokyo 2020 Video games within the ladies’s marathon, the place she achieved a top-10 end.
For full outcomes from the Manitoba Marathon weekend, test right here.
