Olympic champ highlights sprint clinic
One of Canada’s heroes from the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics is coming to Niagara.
Sprinter Brendon Rodney, a member of Canada’s gold-medal winning team in the 4X100-metre rally along with Aaron Brown, Andre De Grasse, and Jerome Blake, will be featured at the Thorold Elite Track Club’s sprints camp and clinic on Saturday Sept. 14 at Governor Simcoe in St. Catharines and Sunday, Sept. 15 at Canada Games Park in Thorold. The camp/clinic will run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day.
Rodney, a 32-year-old native of Etobicoke, also won Olympic relay silver in 2016 and bronze in 2020 and a world championships gold medal in 2022. He has a personal-best time of 10 seconds in the 100 metres and 19.96 seconds in the 200 metres. He was the second Canadian man to crack the 20-second mark in the 200 metres, achieving the feat in 2016.
“We are really excited to be able to host an opportunity for high-performance athletes here in Niagara,” Thorold Elite Track Club coach Steven Fife said. “We have an awesome sprints program and usually this is something that we would have to go to Toronto or even further for, so it’s great to be able to bring an Olympian down to Niagara and have that as a draw.”
The camp/clinic is limited to 30 participants and is open to any high-performance athletes ages 12 to 18 who want to take their sprinting to the next level. An Athletics Ontario membership is required for participants because of insurance purposes.
Included in each day of the clinic will be: four hours on the track; one hour of fitness training specific to sprinting provided by Andrew Yap of Speed Unlimited; and, one hour of classroom time with Rodney. Lunch is also provided both days.
“Hopefully this will be a start of something great and we can make this an annual event or look for future opportunities for collaboration with great Canadian athletes,” Fife said.
Registration is available at www.trackie.com/event/futurestars-sprintcamp. Early bird registration ends Sept. 4 at 11:59 p.m. and regular registration will remain open until all spots are filled.
Early registration is $275 plus HST and regular registration is $300 plus HST.
For more information, contact Steven Fife at 905-348-2214 or Thoroldelitetc@gmail.com.
