Mark Boswell celebrates after his World High Jump silver medal in Seville (© Getty Images)
It’s a small team that arrives in Birmingham this week to represent Canada at the 9th World Indoor Championships in Athletics. Time will tell if it is one that can make an impact.
Of the seven member contingent, once again high jumper Mark Boswell will carry the load of expectations especially after he won at Verizon Millrose Games in early February with a leap of 2.31m, easily his best start to a season. The fact this was achieved merely days after doctors gave him the green light to resume jumping after a hamstring injury is even more encouraging. Boswell too will want to put behind him his abysmal performance in Lisbon two years ago, when he finished 12th.
Commonwealth Games silver medallist Diane Cummins has run 800m in 2:00.66 already this season and will be another athlete from whom Athletics Canada officials will expect much. Indeed, some members, including 1500m runner Graham Hood, were last minute qualifiers despite turning in some respectable indoor performances.
Hood ran 3:55.70 for the mile at the Tyson Invitational, one of the meets in the USATF’s Golden Spike tour. This was a sure sign of fitness. Nevertheless he was required to run 1500m in 3:43. When he fell during the Karlsruhe 1500m it appeared his season was over. But the management team at KIM in England were able to get him into the British AAA championships as a guest. There he led from the gun intent on satisfying Athletics Canada’s rigid standards. He ended up 3rd in 3:43.78.
“We purposely set the standards high so that each athlete we bring to the championships has a reasonable expectation of getting out of the first round and into the semi-finals possibly into the finals,” explains Alex Gardner, head coach of the Canadian team.
“Mark Boswell will perform well, Nick Macrozonaris is running well (6.56) and should make the 60m semi-finals and has a really good shot at making the final. But the men's 60m will be tough.”
”Philomena Mensah has been in the top three in the world before and she has been training hard in Utah with her coach Craig Poole, the women's coach at BYU.”
Mensah finished 4th in Maebashi but after Inger Miller’s positive drug test almost a year later was awarded the bronze medal. That coupled with hurdler Katie Anderson’s bronze at the same meeting is still Canada’s best performance at the World Indoors. The Ghanaian born sprinter has focused since then on raising her child. On January 25th, Mensah finally showed a return to form with a clocking of 7.18 seconds run, albeit altitude assisted.
The team is competing under further duress. Recently the Canadian federal government handed down its budget and shocked the amateur sports world by cutting back their support of these programmes. What’s more, some financial aid is tied to Vancouver’s bid for the 2010 winter Olympics. If the bid is successful money will flow. Otherwise, who knows?
“At one time government funding for athletics was about $2 million Cdn a year. Now its $1 million and that’s 2003 dollars!” says Gardner, a former President of the sport governing body. “We still have a large membership. We don’t know how the new budget is going to affect us. Sport Canada hasn't told us but we feel we are deserving of some of the new money that was talked about. We will definitely be aggressive in asking for what we believe we deserve. Hopefully by April we will have a budget in place so we can prepare for the outdoor season.”
Athletics Canada officials will have their fingers crossed that these World Championships will provide ammunition to justify Gardner’s financial demands. If not, we may be looking at another small team for the outdoor World Championships in Paris
Paul Gaines for the IAAF
