Canadian Working and Underneath Armour have teamed up for the 2024 Canadian U Sports activities indoor monitor and area season to spotlight a number of the prime homegrown skills throughout the nation. Every week main as much as the 2024 U Sports activities Indoor Observe and Discipline Championships in Winnipeg this March, Canadian Working will choose one female and male monitor and area athlete because the Underneath Armour Athlete of the Week.
Every week, the award will go to a female and male U Sports activities monitor and area athlete who achieved a standout efficiency, broke a college report or crushed a private greatest. Every week of the U Sports activities 2024 season, these athletes shall be featured on Canadian Working and awarded an Underneath Armour prize pack. This week we spotlight two sensational athletes: middle-distance runner Max Davies of Guelph College and 60m sprinter Audrey Leduc of Université Laval for his or her performances between Jan. 22-28.
Feminine Athlete of the Week: Audrey Leduc–girls’s 60m
Laval sprinter Audrey Leduc had a weekend to recollect on the McGill Group Problem in Montreal on Jan 26-27. The 24-year-old enterprise pupil from Gatineau, Que., clocked a brand new private greatest of seven.29 seconds within the girls’s 60m, equalling the quickest 60m time by a Canadian girl in 2024. Leduc’s time broke Laval’s 60m faculty report of seven.31 seconds, set in 2009. However Leduc was not accomplished; she additionally helped the Laval girls’s 4x200m relay group to gold on the McGill Group Problem, setting a brand new faculty, convention and Quebec provincial report of 1:37.66. To prime it off, she completed second within the lengthy leap, with a season’s-best leap of 5.75 metres.
“I couldn’t be happier with my race,” Leduc informed Canadian Working about her 60m efficiency. “Setting the college report has been a objective because the first day I got here to Université Laval.” Her time additionally equals the Quebec provincial 60m report of seven.29 seconds, set by Kimberly Hyacinthe in 2014.
Leduc has lofty objectives for the rest of the U Sports activities season. “I wish to win the 60 metres and defend my lengthy leap title,” she says. Exterior of U Sports activities, her dream is to be on the Canadian Olympic group in Paris. “I wish to qualify for the 100m and the 4x100m relay group,” says Leduc.
Male Athlete of the Week: Max Davies–males’s 1,500m
Canada has its seventy fifth sub-four-minute miler, and his identify is Max Davies. On Saturday on the Penn State Open in College Park, Penn., Davies received the boys’s mile in a brand new Guelph Gryphons faculty report time of three:59.24. His time surpassed his former teammate Alec Purnell’s report of three:59.72 from final yr. Davies was not completed; the 20-year-old additionally earned an enormous new private greatest within the 3,000m, recording the quickest time by a Canadian U Sports activities athlete this yr (8:00.24).
Davies informed Canadian Working that breaking the four-minute mile mark has been a objective since he began working. “I’m very pleased with my performances and joyful to name myself a sub-4 miler,” he says. His objective was additionally to interrupt the eight-minute mark for 3K, however since he doesn’t race over 3,000m very a lot, he says he can’t complain about having achieved a private greatest.
Regardless of becoming a member of the sub-four-minute mile membership, Davies is raring to get again on the monitor to race one other mile, however this time in Boston. “The objective is to have some enjoyable and race quick at OUAs and U Sports activities,” he says. “I’m planning on working the 1,500m, 1,000m, and the 4x800m relay.”
Avery Pearson and Jude Wheeler-Dee named Underneath Armour U Sports activities Athletes of the Week
If you want to appoint a Canadian U Sports activities athlete for Underneath Armour Athlete of the Week, ship @canadianrunning a message on Instagram or electronic mail marley@runningmagazine.ca.
