Sarah Mitton of Brooklyn, Nova Scotia and Ben Flanagan of Kitchener, Ontario set Canadian records this weekend. Mitton broke her own Canadian record in the women’s shot put at the 2022 Canadian Track and Field Championships in Langley, British Columbia, and Flanagan broke the Canadian record in a men’s 10 kilometre road event in Boston.
Mitton was the first Canadian woman to reach the 20 metre mark. She posted a throw of 20.33 metres to break her own Canadian record. The previous Canadian record belonged to Mitton of 19.58 metres at the 2022 Golden Horseshoe Prep Meet in Hamilton, Ontario on May 7. The world record belongs to Natalya Lisovskaya of the Soviet Union, who had a throw of 22.63 metres on June 7, 1987.
Flanagan posted a time of 28 minutes and 11 seconds to beat the previous record set by Paul McCloy of St. John’s, Newfoundland, who had a time of 28 minutes and 17 seconds in Orlando, Florida on February 21, 1987. It should be noted that Flanagan’s 10 kilometre road record is different than the Canadian men’s 10000 metre record that belongs to Canadian Olympic silver medalist Mohammed Ahmed of St. Catharines, Ontario. Ahmed, who won the silver medal in the men’s 5000 metres at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021, has the Canadian record with a time of 26:34.14 in a 10000 metre track event, which was set in San Juan Capistrano, California on March 6, 2022.
