Cam Levins will run from the Island to Paris. Metaphorically, of course. The marathoner from Black Creek was chosen Wednesday for the Canadian team that will compete in the 2024 Olympic Games along with fellow-marathoner Malindi Elmore of Kelowna. Both have achieved the Olympic qualifying standard over the qualifying period.
Levins, 34, did it last March by breaking his own Canadian record by running 2:05:36 to place fifth in the Tokyo Marathon. It was also the fastest time ever recorded by a North American, eclipsing American Khalid Khannouchi’s 2:05.38 in the 2002 London Marathon. It was the second time in less than a year that Levins had lowered his own Canadian record, after placing fourth in the 2022 World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon in 2:07:09. The time in Eugene broke Levins’ original Canadian record of 2:09:25, set in the 2018 Toronto Marathon, which had bested Jerome Drayton’s hallowed 43-year-old Canadian record of 2:10:09 set in 1975 at Fukuoka, Japan.
“Anytime I get to put on a Canadian singlet and compete at the Olympics or the world championships is always really exciting. I live for being able to compete on these big stages and face the very best in the world, and the Olympics is the peak of that,” Levins said in a statement.
Paris will be Levins’ third Olympic Games after keeping with the lead pack, but fading to a sharply-disappointing and humbling 72nd in the marathon of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and racing in the finals of both the 5,000 and 10,000 metres at the 2012 London Olympics.
“This one is really special for me, after getting all the experience of these previous Olympics,” said Levins, a former sa国际传媒 high school champion at G.P. Vanier Secondary in Courtenay, and 10,000-metre bronze-medallist in the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games.
“My wife [Elizabeth] hasn’t seen me compete live in any of my Olympics yet, and that’s pretty special for her to be able to do that in Paris.”
Elmore, second in the sa国际传媒 10K in 2019 and winner of the Royal Victoria Half-Marathon in 2015, has been a fixture in Island races and will also be heading to her third Olympics after making the women’s standard for Paris by running a personal best 2:23:30 in the Berlin Marathon in September.
She was ninth in the women’s marathon at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics after representing sa国际传媒 in the 1,500 metres at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Elmore, 43, retired in 2012 before returning to running in 2019.
