Canadian Working and Underneath Armour have teamed up for the 2024 Canadian U Sports activities indoor observe and discipline season to spotlight among the prime homegrown abilities throughout the nation. Every week, main as much as the 2024 U Sports activities Indoor Monitor and Subject Championships in Winnipeg subsequent month, Canadian Working will choose one female and male observe and discipline athlete because the Underneath Armour Athlete of the Week.
The award will go to a female and male U Sports activities observe and discipline athlete who achieved a standout efficiency, broke a college document or crushed a private finest. These athletes will probably be featured on Canadian Working and awarded an Underneath Armour prize pack that includes the brand new UA Infinite Elite coaching shoe. This week we spotlight one other two sensational athletes who shattered faculty information: Chloe Richardson of Dalhousie College and middle-distance star Jonathan Podbielski of the College of Regina, for his or her performances between Feb. 19 and Feb. 25.
Feminine Athlete of the Week: Chloe Richardson–girls’s 600m
On the Atlantic College Sport (AUS) convention championships, Richardson racked up three gold medals within the girls’s 600m, 1,000m, and the 4x800m relay to assist the Dalhousie girls’s observe and discipline workforce win their thirty fourth consecutive convention title, a U Sports activities document throughout all Canadian college sports activities.
In addition to profitable three golds, Richardson additionally did it in model by setting two AUS convention information. On the primary day of the championships, she received the ladies’s 1,000m in an AUS document time of two:52.32 to safe gold, and on Day 2, she adopted up her win with a brand new private finest within the girls’s 600m, profitable gold by two and a half seconds in 1:33.14. To cap all of it off, Richardson additionally anchored the Dalhousie girls’s 4x800m relay workforce to a brand new AUS document of 9:17.48.
Richardson was ecstatic about her record-setting weekend, which has earned her a spot on the Canadian U Sports activities Monitor and Subject Championships in Winnipeg, in two weeks’ time. “I’m trying ahead to operating on a banked observe at U Sports activities and hopefully operating some PBs there,” says Richardson. “I feel our 4x800m relay workforce has loads of potential to problem for a podium spot. I’m excited to see what our workforce can do.”
The fourth-year regulation scholar has had a novel journey thus far in her college profession. Richardson, who’s a standout on the Dalhousie girls’s soccer workforce as a ahead, began her observe and discipline profession as a sprinter and lately made the change to operating middle-distance occasions. Subsequent fall, Richardson plans to completely embrace the transition to distance operating as she’s going to shift her focus to her first cross-country season with Dalhousie.
Male Athlete of the Week: Jonathan Podbielski–males’s 1,500m
The College of Regina Cougars received a complete of 9 medals on the CanWest convention championships final weekend in Edmonton, and Podbielski received 4 of them. The second-year middle-distance observe star received gold within the 1,500m and the 1,000m, breaking his personal faculty document within the 1,500m (3:47.45) and narrowly lacking the CanWest convention document of three:47:43 by two one-hundredths of a second. He additionally received a silver and bronze medal within the relay occasions.
Regardless of narrowly lacking the document, Podbielski wasn’t disheartened, as he helped considered one of his teammates, Brayden Mytopher, qualify for U Sports activities. “It’s his final yr competing, and he’s been sidelined for many of the indoor season with an damage, so once I noticed he crossed the road in second to qualify, that was all that mattered to me,” says Podbielski.
Podbielski faces a full plate on the 2024 U Sports activities Monitor and Subject Championships on March 7-9, competing within the 1,500m, 1,000m, and 4x800m relay with the Regina Cougars. “I’d be mendacity if I mentioned I’m going for something lower than the win in all my races,” says Podbielski. “Our males’s 4x800m workforce is ranked #1 within the nation heading in; I do know nothing would make my coach Steve Davis happier than a win in essentially the most thrilling relay at U Sports activities.”
After the indoor season involves an finish, Podbielski says he plans on turning his consideration to restoration, each bodily and educational. The reigning U20 800m and 1,500m nationwide champion doesn’t intend to take a lot day without work coaching earlier than the outside season and goals to make an impression on the Bell Canadian Olympic Trials in Montreal in June.
Chloe Turner and Aaron Thompson named Underneath Armour U Sports activities Athletes of the Week
If you want to appoint a Canadian U Sports activities athlete for Underneath Armour Athlete of the Week, ship @canadianrunning a message on Instagram or e-mail marley@runningmagazine.ca.
