News release: Canadian 10K Championships return to Ottawa on May 28, 2022

Ben Flanagan and Leslie Sexton to defend their titles

Ottawa, May 11, 2022 – The Canadian 10K Championships will be returning to Ottawa on May 28 after a 2-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

After the championships were canceled altogether in 2020, the 2021 Athletics Canada Canadian 10K Championships took place in Toronto last October rather than in Ottawa last May. 

It was there that Ben Flanagan raced to a 28:42 victory and Leslie Sexton was also crowned national champion with a personal best of 32:04.  

This time around, Flanagan will be facing competition from Luc Bruchet, a two-time Canadian Olympian at 5,000m, and also from Rory Linkletter, who recently broke the Canadian Half Marathon record with a time of 1:01:08, and ran a 28:43 10K at the Cooper River Ridge Run in April

Leslie Sexton for her part just won the 2022 Vancouver Sun Run 10k in 32:37. She will again be facing Kingston’s Cleo Boyd who claimed the silver medal in Toronto with a personal best of 33:21.

Natasha Wodak, now 40, recently confirmed she will race the distance. In 2019, she, along with Ottawa Elite Athlete Coordinator Dylan Wykes, were crowned Canadian 10k champion here. 

A late addition to the field is Malindi Elmore, the Canadian marathon record holder (2:24:50) who finished 11th in the recent Boston Marathon.  

Without international competitors at this year’s Ottawa 10K presented by Otto’s Ottawa, the course records of Ethiopia’s Deriba Merga who ran 27:24 in 2009 and Kenya’s Gladys Cherono (30:56 set in 2015) are not in play. 

The focus will instead be on the Canadian records of 31:44 for the women, and 28:17 for the men, both of which have stood since the late 1980s! 

$1,000 to the winners’ chosen Desjardins Charity Challenge participating charity

In addition to awarding $6,000 to the Canadian champions,  Tamarack Ottawa Race Weekend has announced it will be donating $1,000 to the 10K champions’ Desjardins Charity Challenge charities of choice. Close to $500,000 has been raised so far for local charities as part of the challenge. 

Related information

Tamarack Ottawa Race Weekend is set to take place May 28-29, 2022 with over 20,000 people currently registered to run, walk or roll in one of 6 events throughout the weekend. For more information or to register, visit www.runottawa.ca.