Canadian middle-distance runners Kieran Lumb and Lucia Stafford adopted up a day of stable performances for Group Canada on the 2024 World Indoor Championships in Glasgow. Lumb positioned second in males’s 1,500m heats to advance to his first world ultimate, whereas Stafford took the third and ultimate spot in a tactical warmth to punch a ticket into Sunday’s girls’s 1,500m ultimate.
Stafford got here into World Indoor with an additional gear after bowing out of the heats final summer season in Budapest. Her race technique was to carry her place on the within lane, which labored out for the 26-year-old within the ultimate 100 metres. She is going to now get an opportunity to compete for a medal in girls’s 1,500m.
“The ladies’s 1,500m is on one other stage,” says Stafford. “The distinction between making the ultimate and never, comes right down to the day.” On factor Stafford says she saved telling herself throughout at this time’s race was to be affected person. “Race techniques are essential, and that is one thing I’ve needed to study.”
All smiles from Lucia Stafford 🇨🇦 on qualifying for Sunday’s W 1,500m ultimate.#WICGlasgow2024 pic.twitter.com/n5CQ6XVO5v
— Canadian Working (@CanadianRunning) March 1, 2024
This will probably be Stafford’s first international ultimate. She virtually made the Olympic ultimate three years in the past in Tokyo. “I wanted to step up my sport,” Stafford advised Canadian Working.
For Lumb, this will even be his first world ultimate on the lads’s facet. Lumb led his warmth of the lads’s 1,500m from almost 200m onwards, solely handed by Portugal’s Isaac Nader on the bell lap. “I’m thrilled to be advancing,” says Lumb. “In Budapest, I used to be comfortable to be there. Now, I’m extra assured.”
Within the 1,500m occasion, there’s not a lot room for error with solely three qualifying spots up for grabs, with no time-based qualifiers. With a number of of the large names in males’s middle-distance operating not competing in Glasgow, as a result of varied causes, all three medals are up for grabs in Sunday’s ultimate.
“I have to make good selections between now and the race,” says Lumb. “Anybody within the ultimate may medal. It’s a really open area and I need to put all of it collectively on the day.”
“Anybody within the ultimate may medal… it’s a really open area. I need to do all I can to place it collectively on the day.”
Kieran Lumb 🇨🇦 on advancing to Sunday’s males’s 1,500m ultimate.#WICGlasgow24 pic.twitter.com/QmD2HLca10
— Canadian Working (@CanadianRunning) March 1, 2024
Quebec’s Simone Plourde and Charles Philibert-Thiboutot didn’t place within the prime three of their respective heats to advance to Sunday’s ultimate.
Earlier on Day 1, Canadian shot putter Sarah Mitton received the primary medal on the World Indoor Championships, throwing a nationwide document mark to win gold.
