Paul Osland, president of Canadian masters track, has posted a bunch of race videos from Kamloops. He also wrote a final report on the ‘Loops experience (something our own prez should emulate). Paul began: “The WMA 2010 World Masters Indoor Championships have now come to a close. This was my first indoor World Championships; I have now been to three outdoor Championships, and to have a championship in our home Country made it very special for me. I was very impressed with the incredible friendliness and helpful nature of the Local Organizing Committee.” Here is M55 Bill Collins winning the 60 — with his patented standing start:

Here’s the rest of Paul’s note to 1,700 subscribers to Doug Smith’s newsletter.

We were provided with six wonderful, competition-filled days that went amazingly smoothly, considering the magnitude of the task undertaken by the LOC. I have been at many international events over the years, and I can honestly say that I felt the LOC did an outstanding job and are owed a great deal of appreciation for all of their efforts. These efforts were not only during the six days of competition, but also in the many preceding months, in coordinating all aspects of the event, from volunteers picking the athletes up at the airport to a memorable Opening Ceremonies and activities scheduled throughout the competition.

The timing was incredible as well – BC was just coming off their showcase to the World in hosting the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. On Sunday afternoon, many of us were crowded around a television to watch the unforgettable Canada versus the US Gold Medal Men’s Hockey game, just a few hours before our opening ceremonies. What a great inspiration to start our competition.

I think we all must have felt it only fitting to continue on in that fashion, as the Canadian results in Kamloops were absolutely incredible. Each night I would pore through the results on the website, to list all of the Canadian medal winners from that day so we could post them on the Canadian bulletin board. Wednesday night I was up into the wee hours of the morning recording the 72 medal winners we had on that day. Someone asked me after we first posted the results “Are you sure we really won that many medals? It must be a mistake.” I responded that it was no mistake; Canadians were doing an amazing job. In the end, Canada had won 304 medals (117 Gold, 105 Silver and 82 Bronze).

I am sure that we will all have some very memorable moments to take away from this competition. Mine was actually not from my race – that one is still a bit of a blur to me – I just remember thinking with 150m to go “I hope my Achilles will hold together until I get to the finish line”. My most memorable moment, however, was sitting in the stands watching the 200m finals and seeing Andre Francois put a major licking on the M45 field, which included Enrico Saraceni. I watched Enrico win the 100m, 200m, and 400m races at the World Outdoor Championships last summer in Finland. For Andre to win in such a convincing manner was truly amazing, and with a time of 23.01 on a track that is not conducive to fast 200m times is phenomenal. I encourage all of you to Kam Paul 800m 2.jpgthink about the memorable experiences that you had at this competition, and learn from some of the minor inconveniences that we all experienced, as a preparation for future events. Please send us some of your stories, so we can publish them in the next CMAA Masterpiece magazine; apparently, there is rumour of a goat story that will be included. Please also send any constructive comments on how you think we could improve, for future World Championship events.

I would like to personally thank Brian Keaveney for all of the efforts he put into not only registering all Canadian athletes into the competition, but also in working closely with the LOC to ensure as smooth a competition as possible. Many of you do not realize that Brian is the WMA Non Stadia VP. This means that he is responsible for the set up and coordination of all events held outside of the stadium, i.e., the cross country races, the road race walks and the half marathon. I have heard that the cross country course was great and very flat considering we were surrounded by hills everywhere.

Special recognition also goes to Cathy Tedford and Clara Northcott for taking on the responsibility of Team Managers. This was the first time for both Cathy and Clara as Team Managers, and they did their first one at an event where we had more Canadians than ever before. Thanks to both for their dedication and efforts in keeping everything running smoothly.

I have posted some videos that I took on YouTube under the Canadian Masters name at www.youtube.com/Canadianmasters I was only able to get a few videos from the indoor competitions. If anyone has any videos from other track & field events or non stadia events like cross country, race walks or half marathon and you would be willing to share, please contact me at paul.osland@hotmail.com and we will figure a way to get them loaded to this sight or linked.

We will also be publishing the full results of Canadian athletes in the upcoming Masterpiece magazine and posting all results to the CMAA website at: www.canadianmastersathletics.com if you are anxious to see the results immediately, you can view all of the results on the Kamloops website at: www.kamloops2010masters.com or if you just want to see the Canadian medal winners or full Canadian only results you can find those on the Ontario Masters website at: http://ontariomasters.ca/results.php Also Doug Smith has an amazing collection of pictures he took that can be viewed at: http://www.ontariomasters.ca/viewphoto.php

Many of you have asked me what I will be focusing on this year as the President of the CMAA. For 2010, I have 3 major mandates that I would like to accomplish. They are as follows:

1) Provide more timely and relevant information through the CMAA ENews format;

2) Complete the negotiations with Athletics Canada to provide reciprocal membership with AC and CMAA for all masters athletes across Canada, part of which involves an update to the CMAA constitution; and

3) Complete an overhaul of the CMAA website, so it is up to date and incorporates additional social networking functionality to provide Masters Athletes across Canada with a forum to regularly interact.

Your CMAA executive has been working very hard over the past several months on all of these fronts. You have already started to receive ENews communications and can expect regular updates going forward, including my report at least once per quarter on current activities within the CMAA.

We have been working with AC representatives over the past couple of months to finalize a proposal for a strategic alliance between the CMAA and AC. This proposal has been approved by the CMAA board and is currently being reviewed by representatives from AC. Our intention is to have a formal proposal presented to the AC branch Presidents for their approval at the AC AGM this coming July. Hopefully starting in January of 2011 all Masters aged athletes of AC and CMAA will be part of the same family with the same rights, privileges and benefits. A committee has been working on reviewing the CMAA constitution as well as looking at incorporation of the CMAA.

Another CMAA committee has been working diligently on developing a communications strategy that includes an overhaul to the existing website. We will have an update for the membership in the next quarter.

At the World Indoor Championships in Kamloops March 1-6, I had the opportunity to meet many new people and put faces to some names of people I had heard about. I look forward to being part of a number of exciting changes for the CMAA in the coming year that will provide us all opportunities to grow our community networking capabilities.