Track athletes shine

When all was said and done, St. Lazare resident Jeremy Thibodeau of the St. Laurent Select Track and Field Club won silver in the long jump with a leap of 6.48-metres and bronze in the 100-metre hurdles with a time of 14.93 while competing in the boys’ under-15 category. Thibodeau also teamed up with Hacheming Baptiste of the West Island Track Club, Joseph Brunetta and Jason Charbonneau to capture silver for Quebec in the 4X100-metre relay, while Hacheming Baptiste also combined with Brunetta, Charbonneau and Benjamin Raymond to win bronze in the medley relay.

Meanwhile, in the girls’ u-17 category, Ariel Beauregard-Breton of the Pointe Claire-based McGill Olympic Club captured gold in the 3,000-metre steeple event with a time of 7:09.42 Her time was about 4.5 seconds short of the Legion record set by West Island native Lise Ogrodnick.

Willows qualifies

for Beijing

The Pointe Claire Canoe Club (PCCC) will see at least one of its paddlers compete at next summer’s Olympics in Beijing. Gananoque, Ont., native Andrew Willows, who moved to Montreal to train at Pointe Claire, along with partner Richard Dober of Trois-Rivières, Que., finished sixth in the 500-metre K-2 event on Saturday at the World Canoe and Kayak Championships in Duisburg, Germany. The result was good enough to earn the tandem an Olympic spot. This will mark the second consecutive Olympic appearance for Willows, who qualified along with Ryan Cuthbert, Steve Jorens and Richard Dober Jr., in the K-4 1,000-metre final at the 2004 Game in Athens. They finished last in the race. However, it was considered a very big deal for everyone connected with the Canadian kayak program at Athens. The boat had been ranked 26th in the world four years before.

Meanwhile, Pointe Claire native Thomas Hall, of the PCCC, along with brothers Attila and Tamas Buday of Mississauga, Ont., and Dimitri Joukovski of Halifax finished seventh in the 1,000-metre C-4 event on Saturday at Duisberg. Hall will get another opportunity to qualify for Beijing next spring at the Americas qualifier, which will be held in Montreal.쇓