After a rainy spring training season, the weather once again held sunny for the Vancouver Championships (VSSAA Preliminaries), with many excellent performances on the road to the Vancouver Sea to Sky Zone Championships. Here are just some of the notable athletes and performances from the two-day event, out of the many.
Chloe Symon, last year's Provincial Junior Girls champion in the 400m and runner-up in the 800m, dominated the two events. Symon ran 57.87 for a 6-second win over second place and a 2:17 for a 9-second win, looking like she will be firmly in medal contention in the events this year as a senior.
Meanwhile, there were standout performances in the longer distances as well. Junior Benjamin Smith took the win in the 3000m by nearly a full minute, running a time of 9:20.05, which based on last year's provincial results, would place him firmly in the top half of the field. Smith also won the 1500m in a time of 4:26.
Delphine Gosselin, 5th place finisher in the Junior Girls Steeplechase at last year's provincials, also had an outstanding performance in the 3000m with a time of 10:31, 50 seconds faster than the field and a time that would place her in the top 8 at provincials, based on last year's results. She also took the 1500m by 13 seconds and sub-5 performance of 4:58.
Out in the field, last year's Junior Girls Long Jump Provincial Champion Lily Stewart won the Junior Girls long jump by a half meter and improved on the mark that won her the provincial title last year with a jump of 5.38m. Stewart, also last year's provincial bronze medallist in the heptathlon, also won the 200m with a time of 26.48.
Senior Marylou Djida, 2023 provincial silver medalist in the triple jump, took the Vancouver triple jump title with a leap of 11.17m, 3m ahead of the rest of the field and an improvement over her silver medal mark from last year. In the Junior Boys High Jump, Mohammed Rahim won by 10cm with a jump of 1.80m, a jump that based on results from the 2023 provincials, would put him in the medal hunt.
In the circle, last year's Junior Boys Provincial Champion in the shot put and silver medallist in the discus, Roman Yeterian, had a strong showing. Yeterian won the senior shot put by 4m with a throw of 13.53m and the discus by over 15m with a throw of 44.91m. His throws would've been good for the win in both events at last year's provincials.
While there were many highlights this week, these are just a selection of athletes to be on the lookout for at the Sea-To-Sky Zone Championships and onwards to provincials in June. Congratulations to all the athletes who competed and best of luck to those moving onwards to zones!