Where Your Dreams Become
Reality
Where Your Dreams Become
Reality
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Womens marathon kicks off Olympic track and field competition with no Canadian representation for the third straight Summer Games Toronto (Tuesday, August 12, 2008) On August 17th, when women from nations from all over the world collect on the starting line of the Olympic Marathon event, there will be no sign of the maple leaf. In fact, Canadas top marathoner, Tara Quinn-Smith, 28, who finished this springs ING Ottawa Marathon in 2:33:57 over three minutes under the International Olympic A standard of 2:37:00 will watch the Olympic Games from the her training base in Toronto, left off the team having not met the 2:29:08 A standard demanded by Canadian officials. Quinn-Smith, who has represented Canada over 10,000m at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, is a full-time athlete and member of the Brooks Canada Marathon Project. In 2008 she became the Canadian Marathon Champion, racing to a 2:33:57 finish at the ING Ottawa Marathon on May 25th. The marathon is often thought of as the marquee event of the Olympic Games, where streets throughout the entire city are closed for hours and fans line up several deep along the route to cheer. It is a mystery to current Canadian womens marathon record holder Silvia Ruegger, who was 8th in the inaugural womens Marathon at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, to why Canadian officials would not want their women to be part the event. Now that the opportunity is finally there, Canada is re-creating the barrier and is not given women the chance they deserve (to go). Canada is removing heroes from our sport by not allowing deserving women to go. They are shutting down the dream and killing the future. These sentiments are echoed by Nicole Stevenson, who in 2004 was in the same place as Quinn-Smith having run well under IAAF A Standard in the marathon leading up to the Olympic Games in Athens. She was a victim of the new rules put in place by the Canadian Olympic Committee before the Athens Games that refused selection to any athletes who had not demonstrated their ability to finish in the top 12 in the world. I go into schools and talk to kids about pursing their dreams under the title of International Marathoner. If I could add Olympian to that, I feel like the kids would better connect to my message. The imposition of these tough standards has not encouraged excellence among Canadian athletes, but has discouraged the development of our talent pool since 2004. Athletics Canada only nominated four women runners to the Track & Field team for the 2008 Beijing Games -- and only one middle or long distance runner, Megan Metcalfe, who will race the 5,000m. Quinn-Smith is disappointed but remains optimistic that she will be able to achieve her Olympic dreams in 2012. It would have been an extremely motivating experience for me to race at the Beijing Olympics. Nevertheless, for the next four years the challenge for me is to keep training hard to hit Canadas standard for the 2012 Olympics. And at the end of the day, after all the hard work is done, I can really only hope and pray that it will be enough to make it to the start line of the marathon of the London Games. About the Brooks Canada Marathon Project: Now in its second year, the Brooks Canada Marathon Project provides distance runners with the opportunity to train with the goal of qualifying for the Olympic Games and World Championships. Thanks to a $1.5-million commitment from Brooks Canada founders Mike and Paul Dyon, the athletes train and live together in a house in Torontos west end provided by the Project. They also receive medical and travel support, and performance-based financial incentives. For more information on the BCMP, go to www.brooksrunning.ca .
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Runner's World &
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