Sunday, February 27, 2011

Proudfoot Wins International Race

Track North Press Release
Sunday, February 20th, 2011
"Proudfoot wins international race - claims NACAC gold"

Track North's Ross Proudfoot (Lively, ON) won his first gold medal in international competition this past weekend by running to first place at the NACAC (North America, Central America and Caribbean) Junior Cross Country Championships in Port of Spain, Trinidad.

Competing as part of Team Canada, Proudfoot covered the 6km course in 18 minutes, 26.74 seconds to claim gold.  Proudfoot finished just ahead of teammates Connor Darlington (Toronto, ON) and Paul Janikowski (Windsor, ON) as Canada swept the medals and took the team title, ahead of the United States and Puerto Rico.

By virtue of their performance, Proudfoot and his teammates will represent Canada next month at the IAAF World Cross-Country Running Championships in Punta Umbria, Spain.

"My plan for the race was to start easier and pick it up as I went. I didn't want to push too hard early with the heat and have a rough back end of the race. The race played out really nice for me and had a relatively comfortable first 3 kilometres and I was able to really push the pace on the last kilometer to take the gold" commented Proudfoot following the race.

When asked about what it was like to win his first international competition, he noted: "It was a really neat experience being able to stand on top of an international podium, but what was even better is I got to do it with the rest of my team as we swept the podium and won the championship. All of team Canada was from Ontario so I got to race alongside all of the guys I'm normally up against and being able to drop the last American with my two other teammates and sweep the medals was definitely the coolest thing I've ever been a part of in any race."

With respect to qualifying for the World Championships - "It was great to be able to book our seat for Worlds, we have a strong team that works really good together so we should be able to do very well for a Canadian team and hopefully will mix it up with some of the teams in the top half of the event."

Prior to heading off to Spain, Proudfoot will complete his first year of university indoor track competition with the provincial OUA championships this upcoming weekend in Toronto and the national CIS Championships March 10-12 in Sherbrooke, QC.