It’s hammer time, but in shorts not baggy pants, as two Island athletes take their head-to-head battle again across oceans. Adam Keenan of Victoria and Ethan Katzberg have been selected to the 50-athlete Canadian team for the World Athletics Championships Aug. 19-27 in Budapest, Hungary.
Katzberg won the silver medal in the men’s hammer throw while Keenan was fifth last summer at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England. Katzberg, out of John Barsby Secondary and the Nanaimo Track and Field Club, and five-time Canadian champion Keenan, out of Lambrick Park Secondary and Athletics Victoria, are looking to take their all-Island battle into the Paris Olympics next summer.
“Paris 2024 is what I am working for,” said Katzberg, after reaching the Commonwealth Games podium in Birmingham.
“This is what my younger person dreamed of doing.”
Also selected to the Canadian team is veteran marathoner Natasha Wodak of the Prairie Inn Harriers. Canadian men’s marathon record-holder Cam Levins of Black Creek, who has already qualified for the Paris Olympics, will not be racing in Budapest. Race-walker Olivia Lundman of Nanaimo is on a list of athletes subject to World Athletics invitation, to be announced Saturday.
Three Island coaches will be represented by athletes in Budapest — Keenan’s mentor Sheldan Gmitroski of Victoria, Wodak’s coach Trent Stellingwerff of Victoria, and Jim Finlayson of Victoria, the coach for marathoner Kinsey Middleton of Guelph, Ont. Katzberg is coached by Olympic shot-put medallist Dylan Armstrong of Kamloops.
The athletes were selected through the Canadian track and field championships last week in Langley. sa国际传媒 is coming off a four-medal showing in the 2022 World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon, paced by the gold medal won by Andre De Grasse, Aaron Brown, Jerome Blake and Brendon Rodney in the marquee-event men’s 4x100 relay.
“There is a lot of strength throughout the entire group that’s been selected,” Canadian head coach Glenroy Gilbert said in a statement.
“If you look at the individuals that make up the team, there are obviously some heavy hitters.”
And nobody should be happy just to be in Budapest this month, or Paris next summer. The post-Vancouver 2010 Canadian ethic of stressing winning and results is starting to be questioned in some corners in this country, but athletes have to know they are there at world championships, World Cups and Olympics for a reason.
“We’re a very diverse group and we’re expecting people to go out there and perform on demand,” said Gilbert.
