Legion stars went on to bigger track careers

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This article was published 03/08/2018 (2802 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The slogan attached to the Legion National Youth Track and Field Championships is: Future Olympians Start Here.

Geneviève Lalonde and Liz Gleadle, a pair of past record-setting gold medalists, are a testament to it.

Gleadle donned the Red and White in javelin at the 2012 London Games and did so again four years later in Rio de Janeiro, while Lalonde was also on the Canadian team that went to Brazil, competing in the 3,000-metre steeplechase.

Lalonde, who turns 27 next month, made the first of her three Legion nationals appearances in 2006 when she travelled from New Brunswick to Burnaby, B.C.

The Moncton native ascended to the top of the podium twice in her Legion debut, winning the midget (under-16) girls’ 1,200m race — it changed to 1,500m in 2010 — in a time of four minutes 36.32 seconds and setting a new Legion mark in the 3,000m — it changed to 2,000m in 2010 as well — at 9:56.64.

Ontario’s Beth Tarasok held the previous fastest time, 9:56.88, which was established in Ottawa in 1983.

“I remember it being a really cool competition and a cool event, especially for a young Maritime kid,” Lalonde said from her home in Guelph, Ont. “Those were some of my first experiences leaving home and travelling across Canada. I remember going to Burnaby and being exposed to a new place and it being really cool because it was just outside of Vancouver and we got to go see Vancouver.

“I remember it being such a great experience of competing against the nation’s best in my age.”

She battled through a stress reaction in her shin at the 2007 Legion nationals in Oromocto, N.B., but returned the following year and collected two more gold medals in Sherbrooke, Que.

Lalonde finished the youth (U18) girls’ 1,500m in 4:31.33 and the 3,000m in 9:36.77.

“In Oromocto, I thought it was really cool because we got to race on the base and we got to go into tankards,” she said.

“Some of the friendships that I actually created through the Legion I’ve held onto for years. It’s really great because you get to share those experiences whether you continue in track or not and you forge those friendships and they last a lifetime.”

Lalonde believes her efforts at Legion nationals spurred her onto the international athletics career she enjoys, which began in 2007 when she represented Canada at the world youth championships in Ostrava, Czech Republic, where she came in 10th in the 1,500m race.

“I think they lead you into junior-level competition, and because there wasn’t a lot of pressure in them being so young I got to experience and have fun with them, but also take those learning experiences into becoming a junior athlete which led to me becoming a senior athlete,” Lalonde said.

“Having those experiences in my back pocket definitely helped later on when I competed and wasn’t afraid of different scenarios because I’d experienced most of them.”

It was in her late teenage years that, while training alongside two-time Canadian Olympic steeplechaser Joël Bourgeois, she started to transition into the discipline as well.

The 2010 world junior championships in Moncton marked the first time Lalonde competed in a 3,000m steeplechase race, coming in sixth place in 9:57.74.

“I love flat running, and I still love running the 1,500 and 3,000 metres but ultimately as I got older I realized I needed something different and so I think that’s what the steeplechase allowed me to do was diversify on the track,” she said. “I’m a rugged runner anyways so it was more my event.

“Having those experiences on the flat races definitely helped build the steeplechaser that I am today.”

Lalonde also wore the Maple Leaf at the 2011 World University Games in China, the 2012 North American, Central American and Caribbean U23 championships in Mexico and the 2013 Jeux de la Francophonie in Nice, France.

She earned bronze in the 3,000m steeplechase in France with a time of 9:53.35 and followed that up with another third-place finish two years later at the Pan American Games in Toronto. She crossed the finish line in that race in 9:53.03.

Lalonde made her debut at the world championships later that year in Beijing, but fell short of reaching the final.

That wasn’t the case in 2016, when she made her Olympic debut at the Rio de Janeiro Games. She finished 16th in 9:41.88 — well back of the personal-best and Canadian-record time of 9:30.24 she clocked to qualify for the final — but it was a magical moment being inside Olympic Stadium.

“I was told by one of my coaches and training partners at the time … to take a second to look around the stadium and just acknowledge the fact that I’d made it to the Olympics, and that that was the kind of emotion I wasn’t ever going to feel again even if I ever make it again,” Lalonde recalled.

“You know there’s something special when you’re a kid and you play pretend and look around like there’s a big crowd around you. Stepping onto the track and knowing that had become a reality, and that there’s a crowd 360 degrees around you is pretty incredible and a lot larger than life.”

The five-foot-seven, 123-pound Lalonde has since represented Canada at the 2017 world championships in London — she set a new national record with a time of 9:29.99 — and at this year’s Commonwealth Games, which were held in Gold Coast, Australia. But there’s nothing like the adrenalin rush of competing in the Olympics, and she owes it to her start in athletics at Legion nationals.

“If you would have asked me when I was starting out at the Legion I would not have said I was going to become a steeplechaser, let alone in the Olympic final,” Lalonde said. “I just love competition and I think that’s what Legions allowed me to do was give me access to competition.”

It has been as much of a grind for Lalonde as it has been for Gleadle in her own journey to the international stage.

Gleadle, who is six-foot-one and 178 pounds, debuted at Legion nationals for Team British Columbia in 2004 in Sudbury, Ont. Her expectations were quite low, but she surprised herself with a throw of 38.70 metres that won the youth girls’ javelin competition.

“I went to Legions expecting to get my butt kicked and I ended up winning,” Gleadle said from Vancouver. “I thought, ‘I’m pretty good at this, maybe I should train and join a club.’”

She successfully defended her gold medal the following year in Edmonton, breaking Alana Redfern’s five-year-old Legion record throw of 43.88m with one of 45.89, a mark that stood until 2012 when Ontario’s Victoria Smith recorded a throw of 49.77m in Charlottetown.

Gleadle followed up her record-setting throw at Legion nationals by placing fifth at the World Youth Games in Morocco later that year, when she broke the Canadian youth record with a throw of 50.51m.

Gleadle, 29, doesn’t know if Legion nationals necessarily prepared her for international athletics competition, but she thinks the events helped her discover herself as an athlete.

Like Lalonde, Gleadle, also represented Canada at the world junior championships, World University Games and the NACAC U23 championships, winning gold twice at the latter biennial competition — Mexico in 2008 and Florida in 2010.

“I loved working hard and being exhausted,” Gleadle said. “There’s nothing as exhilarating as working so hard and reaping benefits from it.”

Despite the gold medal in Florida, she still didn’t know if she wanted to push herself to a higher standard.

That changed in April 2011 when she called up Lawrence Steinke and asked him to train her up so she could reach the 2012 Olympics. Seven days after a conversation with Steinke, Gleadle moved to Lethbridge, Alta.

“All I needed to do was be in an environ dedicated to training,” Gleadle said.

She dealt with minor injuries during the summer of 2011 but remained on an upward trajectory until she was hit in the leg by a hammer in January 2012.

Her Olympic dream hung by a thread, but Gleadle wasn’t about to pass an opportunity to represent her country at the Olympics pass her by.

“I had an insane recovery protocol and I wasn’t going to get hampered down by my injury,” she said.

Gleadle persevered and made it to London, qualified for the final and finished 12th with a throw of 58.78m.

“It was pretty amazing,” Gleadle said. “It was my goal simply to throw to my best in the qualifier because that’s what was needed to make it to the final. When I made it, it was so amazing, I was so excited to make it.

She missed the entire 2013 season with a severe back injury but rebounded and since competed at a pair of world championships and Commonwealth Games, captured gold at the 2015 Pan Am Games with a throw of 62.83m and was a member of the Canadian Olympic team in Brazil.

Which of this year’s Legion athletes will follow in the footsteps of Lalonde and Gleadle and reach the Olympics? The three-day competition begins Friday.

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