LANGLEY, B.C. – Jessica Frotten showed she is recovering well from a recent injury with a quadruple gold performance in the women’s wheelchair racing events this past weekend at the Bell Canadian Track and Field Championships.
Frotten, who grew up in Whitehorse and now trains in Regina, flexed her range earning national crowns in the 100-m, 400-m, 800-m, and 1500-m under hot conditions at McLeod Athletic Park.
The 34-year-old competed at the Paralympic Games for the first time last summer in Tokyo and is now tuning up for the Commonwealth Games next month in Birmingham, England.
Three-time Paralympian Alexandre Dupont was a triple winner in the men’s wheelchair division taking the 400-m, 800-m, and 1500-m races
Dupont came on top of a three-horse race with fellow national team members Josh Cassidy and Trystan Smith, posting a winning time of 1:41.59. The trio will all represent Canada at the upcoming Commonwealth Games as well.
“The time was slow, but championships are about winning,” said Dupont, about his 800 win. “I wanted to make them work, and I waited for the backwind on the backstretch to blow past them.”
With Paralympic champion Nate Riech testing his mettle against able bodied racers (he reached the semis in the 1500-m), Liam Stanley of Victoria took the 800-m and 1500-m titles in the men’s ambulatory races.
In the throwing events, Paralympians Renee Foessel of Orangeville, Ont. and Sarah Mickey of Redcliff, Alta., were winners in the discus and shot put ambulatory and wheelchair divisions, respectively.
Road cycling national titles claimed in Edmonton
Road race and time trial titles were up for grabs in the Para cycling categories at the Canadian Road Cycling Championships in Edmonton on the weekend.
In the road races, the tandem duo of Carla Shibley and Meghan Brown, Alexandre Hayward, and Kara Douville all managed to hold on to their respective 2021 titles, with Shibley and Brown as well as Hayward also winning their second gold medals of the week following time trial victories.
In the highly competitive men’s H3 category, Joey Desjardins was able to distance himself from his Paralympic colleagues Charles Moreau and Alex Hyndman to take home his first maple leaf jersey in the road race.
“I’ve been chasing the national title for a long time so I’m happy to go home with it today,” said a visibly excited Desjardins. “It was fun pacing myself throughout the laps, seeing where I was with the other guys [Moreau and Hyndman] and trying to keep a distance on them.
‘’You know it’s always going to be an intense race with those two so we just see who can make the others suffer the most the day of and come out with the win.”
Hyndman was the H3 time trial champion.
Other athletes winning titles in their divisions included Marie-Claude Molnar, Louis-Albert Corriveau Jolin, Lowell Taylor (with pilot Ed Veal), Shelley Gautier, Matthew Kinnie, Nathan Clement, Mel Pemble, and Keely Shaw.
With files from Athletics Canada and Cycling Canada
