Fishing for gold

by Mandy Matthews

A local top-ranked Ontario athlete is running for a double gold medal at the Athletics Ontario midget indoor championships March 2-3 in Toronto.

Fourteen-year-old Graeme Fisher races the 300 metre and the 800 metre races for the Windsor Legion Track and Field Club. He is ranked first in Ontario for the 300 metre sprint and second in the 800 metre run.

Fisher will be running both races at the Toronto Track & Field Centre at York University. He said his main competition, Edward Hayfron,

avoided the head-to-head race with Fisher by moving up an age group to compete against the juniors who are 19 and under. Fisher said he has been creating new personal bests for himself every race.

Hayfron, a runner from Scarborough, Toronto is in the same age bracket as Fisher. In 2012, he ran at the Canadian Youth Legion Track & Field Championships and won bronze in the 1200 metre, age 16 and under.

Fisher said they haven’t raced against each other in four months.

“I’m just going to run my own race,” said Fisher. “I’ve done a few sole races before. I’m actually used to leading the race.”

Fisher has been running for the legion for two years and showed progress when he dropped 11 seconds off of his time in the 800 metre event last season.

Fisher said his goal is to be able to run four or five seconds faster this year.

“I’m going to try to drop four seconds every year in the 800 metres until it starts getting too hard to do. And in the 400 metres, about one or two seconds every year,” said Fisher. “I’m hoping to go to world youths in two years.”

In comparison, 800 metres is about the distance between Ouellette Avenue and Crawford Avenue along Riverside Drive West. Fisher would run this in less than two minutes.

According to Athletics Canada, legion runners can start running the 400 metre event once they are in Grade 10. Student athletes, however, have the ability to run the sprint in grade school and high school divisions.

Chris Scarrow who coaches the middle distance runners for the legion, said his philosophy is to work on speed, technique and form when training younger athletes. He said Fisher’s practices have been very good and he feels as though the athlete will set a new personal best time and bring home gold.

“At this point I’ll never judge a kid in Grade 9 or 10 because it is very difficult, but if he (Fisher) keeps progressing he has the ability to be a top junior in the country,” said Scarrow.

He said Fisher’s biggest weakness right now is speed endurance which they been working on and if he is well rested he will have a good race. Fisher’s height affects his sprinting capability around the sharp corners of the indoor 200 metre track.

“It is going to take some work because he is still growing and that always affects the younger kinds, but he definitely has the work ethic to do it and is motivated so it is just a matter of putting everything together,” said Scarrow.

Fisher said he is looking forward to the outdoor season. The next time he will race Hayfron will be at the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations track and field meet this June in Oshawa. He said he hopes to win OFSAA along with defeating Hayfron.

“I have a really strict diet. I don’t eat any junk food at all and I am just training harder every day,” Fisher said.

Scarrow said some other athletes to watch out for are Carter Day, Brianne Bracci, Quinn Cannella, Paiton Del Monte, Jessica Turner, Shawn Beaudoin and Trevor Way.