Running News Daily

Canada’s Karla Del Grande sets women’s 70+ 100m world record in Sweden

Toronto’s Karla Del Grande has cemented her status as one of the world’s fastest masters runners, holding more than a dozen world age group records. On Wednesday afternoon at the 2024 World Masters Athletics Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden, Del Grande added another record to her illustrious resume by setting a new world record in the W70+ 100m, clocking an impressive 14.70 seconds.

Del Grande’s time won her the gold in the women’s 70+ event, narrowly edging out her Chilean rival, Sara Montecinos, by just one hundredth of a second. Montecinos took the silver with a time of 14.71 seconds, while Finland’s Sinikka Illaru went home with the bronze, finishing in 15.97 seconds.

To put Del Grande’s world record into perspective, she averaged a speed of 25 km/h over 100m at the age of 71. This marks the second time this season that she has broken the 100m world record for the W70+ age group, having run a similar time at last month’s Puma Twilight meet in Hamilton.

Her gold was one of two medals for Canada on Day 2 of the World Masters Athletics Championships in Gothenburg. Calgary’s Maria Zambrano also brought home a medal, winning silver in the W50+ 5,000 meters with a blazing time of 18 minutes and 19 seconds.

Del Grande’s success at the masters level has been nothing short of remarkable. She began competing in 2002 at the age of 49 and has since set numerous Canadian records in various sprint events across both indoor and outdoor competitions. She has been named Ontario Masters Athletics’ Female Masters Athlete of the Year an astounding 12 times and was honored as the World Masters Athlete of the Decade for 2010-2020.

At 71, Del Grande stands as a beacon of inspiration in Canadian masters running, and is known for her indomitable spirit and record-setting performances. In a recent interview, she voiced her goal of sharing her passion for the sport and encouraging other older women to take up running/track and field.

(08/15/2024) Views: 266 ⚡AMP
by Marley Dickinson

Under Armour Diversity Series: Toronto’s Karla Del Grande

For multiple world record holder Karla Del Grande, age is just a state of mind.

Under Armour has teamed up with Canadian Running to produce the Under Armour Diversity Series—an exclusive feature content series designed to highlight and promote individuals and organizations who have demonstrated a commitment to grow the sport of running, support those who are underrepresented and help others. The series features stories and podcasts highlighting these extraordinary Canadians who are making a difference in their communities and on the national running scene.

Karla Del Grande has a few big goals: First, she wants to set another world record, and take home another medal at World Masters Athletics Championships this year. She wants to support her track team at Variety Village in Toronto. And she really, really wants masters athletes to know that the track is open to everyone.

After all, she didn’t find her way there until she was nearly 50 years old. Now, at 71, she’s become a poster-woman of the sport in Canada, thanks to her indomitable record-setting, her sheer dedication to the sport and her love of bringing new people in.

We met up on a snowy day in March at Variety Village, where she trains and runs with the Variety Village Athletics Club. I arrived late, just in time to catch the last 15 minutes of her workout class. Rather than let me stand on the sidelines, she jogged over, grabbed me by the hand, and pulled me into the group class, where athletes of all ages, shapes, sizes and abilities started doing rubber band work with a partner. 

(“Everybody has the right to be part of a gym and have that social connection, no matter who you are, whether you’re a wheelchair user, or you have a mobility issue or anything else,” says Jill Ross Moreash, the class instructor, a former teacher and one of the fittest women I’ve ever seen, told me after class.)

Del Grande handed me a band after I shucked my winter coat and shoes. “You can be my partner,” she said. The workout was not easy.

This isn’t the first time Del Grande has helped bring someone into one of the workout classes. She recalls another snowy day, when she was heading into Variety Village for track practice, and she noticed an older woman standing next to her car, looking bereft. Del Grande started up a conversation, quickly learning the woman had recently been widowed and was hoping to find some conversation and community, but was overwhelmed about going into the gym. Del Grande shepherded her in, gave her a tour, helped her get signed up and brought her to class. She’s so well known as a woman who brings people into the community that she’s honoured on the wall at Variety Village.

That’s how she is on the track, as well: open and generous with her time (while still training to set world records, of course).

As a young girl, Del Grande was sporty, but she and her gym bestie (a race walker named Nicky Slovitt) both recall how, in gym class when they were in school, girls weren’t encouraged to run. That whole bit about our ovaries falling out if we sprinted or high jumped? Not a joke, if you were a gym teacher in the 60s, apparently. They believed it.

The track club at Variety Village isn’t just masters athletes; head coach Jamal Miller has created a vast community of runners ranging from pre-teens to the 70+ age group, with elite runners training alongside new track athletes. “We’re the best kept secret in Scarborough,” says assistant coach Katie Watkins. “We’re in a little bubble of what the world should be. Our track club is quite a diverse team. We cater to people of all abilities, from those living with disabilities to grassroots runners, starting off at age four, all the way up to world champions. The unique part about Jamal and how he trains is that if you’re interested, and you want to try it, he wants to work with you.”

Del Grande is at Variety Village early most days of the week. On Monday, she swims or aqua-jogs, then does weights. (“It’s a longevity thing,” she says. “You need to have balance between focusing on performance but also thinking toward longevity.”) Tuesday, she trains on the indoor track that runs around Variety VIllage’s main gym space. Wednesday is another weight session, this time in a class, and she runs again Thursday. Friday through Sunday depend on what her competition schedule looks like–when we met up on Wednesday, she was racing on Sunday, so the rest of the week was relatively easy, to prepare for that.

Del Grande found the track by accident–a work friend introduced her to running workouts on the track, and it grew from there. At the time, she did casual 5K and 10K runs and races, but she wouldn’t call herself a runner. Her friend brought her along to a track workout held by a local shop. “I really liked the short stuff,” she recalls. “We’d be doing track workouts and everybody else would be complaining that you had to go fast, and going around the track over and over was boring. But I loved it. And  finally somebody said, ‘Well, why aren’t you racing it?'”

It was a lightbulb moment. “I thought adults just did road races,” she says. “It’s very hard to get out the information about the sprinting. But it exists–and there are adults doing high jump and shot put and all the other track and field sports, as well.”

She signed up, one thing led to another, and now, she’s one of the fastest female masters athletes in Canada.

“We always say that you’re never too old, you’re only too young to join Canadian Masters Athletics,” she laughs.

 

(06/14/2024) Views: 433 ⚡AMP
by Molly Hurford

Scot breaks M65 800m world record held by Canadian for nearly 30 years

A world record held by a legendary Canadian runner for almost 30 years was toppled on a track in Italy on Friday, as Britain’s Paul Forbes ran 2:13.74 in the 800m at the European Masters Athletics Championships for a new outdoor world’s best in the M65 division.

Forbes shaved just more than half a second off the longstanding record time of 2:14:33 set by Toronto’s Earl Fee in Buffalo in 1995. With his performance in Italy, the 67-year-old Forbes also sliced 0.93 seconds off his own British M65 800m record, which he set last year at the World Masters Athletics Outdoor Championships in Tampere, Finland.

As he did in Tampere, Forbes topped the podium in both the M65 800m and 1,500m events in Pescara, Italy, running the latter in 4:44:40 on Sept. 23. That effort was only five seconds off the 4:39.15 British M65 outdoor 1500m record he set at a meet in Glasgow in July.

The European Masters Athletic Championships, which ran from Sept. 21 to Oct. 1, featured thousands of athletes from across the continent.

Although Fee’s 800m decades-long record has fallen, the celebrated Canadian runner’s name still features prominently in the list of world masters records. Fee, who is originally from Saskatchewan, still holds the 800m world masters records in the M70 (2:20.52) and the M90 (3:42.52) age groups. According to the latest list of records published from World Masters Athletics, the Canadian still holds nearly a dozen indoor and outdoor masters world records in events ranging from the 200m hurdles to the mile.

In 2019, Fee broke his 60th world record by running 1:29.15 in the M90 400m, a feat he accomplished in oppressive 33 C heat at the North, Central American and Caribbean Masters Athletics (NCCMA) meet at Toronto’s Varsity Stadium. That same year, Fee and fellow Canadian runner Karla Del Grande were named the overall Athletes of the Year by the NCCMA.

Fee was inducted into the Canadian Masters Association Hall of Fame in 2009. The association’s award for the Canadian Masters Athlete of the Year in track is named in his honor.

(10/04/2023) Views: 763 ⚡AMP
by Paul Baswick

Canada’s Karla Del Grande sets two world records at masters meet

At the 2023 World Masters Indoor Championships in Torun, Poland, Toronto sprinter Karla Del Grande broke two women’s 70+ age-group world records to earn two medals for Team Canada.

Del Grande celebrated her 70th birthday on March 27 in stunning fashion, setting a world record in the 200m and 400m. She smashed the W70+ 400m record by six seconds, running a time of 1:11.34 (a blistering speed of 20km/h). The previous record of 1:17.74 was set by Riet Jonkers-Slegers of the Netherlands in 2013.

Two days later (at the same meet), she broke the W70+ 200m world record of 31.86 seconds, clocking a speedy 31.18 seconds in the heats. The record she broke was held by American Kathy Bergen and stood for 11 years. Del Grande also set a Canadian W70 masters record in the 60m, running 9.29 seconds.

Despite winning a few medals and breaking course records, Del Grande described her experience at the 2023 WMA Indoor Championships as ‘incredible.’ “I always have great pride in representing Canada,” she said. “The support I received from Canadian Masters Athletics and my Variety Village team makes everything possible.”

Del Grande has had a lot of success at the masters level. She began competing in 2002 (when she was 49) and has held numerous Canadian records in the sprints in various age categories across indoor and outdoor competitions. She has been named the Ontario Masters Athletics’ Female Masters Athlete of the Year an incredible 12 times and was named World Masters Athlete of the Decade between 2010-2020.

(04/08/2023) Views: 836 ⚡AMP
by Running Magazine

Karla Del Grande has added her sixth masters world record

A week after the end of the Olympic Games, our Canadian athletes are still making headlines on the track.

World Masters Athlete of the Decade Karla Del Grande set a new W65 300m hurdles world record at the Athletics Ontario Masters Championships on the weekend at Toronto’s York University. Del Grande had the W65 300m hurdles Canadian record, which she set in 2020 at 54.70. This weekend she dropped her time down to 54.00 flat.

Del Grande has a long history of success on the track at the masters level. She began competing in 2002 (when she was 49) and has held numerous Canadian records in the sprints in various age categories. She has been named the Ontario Masters Athletics’ Female Masters Athlete of the Year seven times. Del Grande has set the 100m and 200m world records in the W60 and W65 categories, and in 2019 she added a W65 400m world record.

Canadian Olympians Natalia Hawthorn and Lindsey Butterworth were in action at the Ed Murphey Classic in Memphis, Tenn. Hawthorn said on Instagram that this was her last race of the season, as she went after the 2022 World Championship standard, which is 4:04. Hawthorn took home 2nd place in the women’s elite 1,500m in a time of 4:06.51, two seconds shy of the standard. Butterworth ran the 800m in a time of 2:01.57 for sixth, ahead of fellow Canadian middle-distance athlete Ashley Taylor, who finished seventh. Both Butterworth and Taylor also fell shy of the 1:59.50 800m standard for 2022 Worlds. 

In the men’s 3000m, Jean-Simon Desgagnés finished third and set a new personal best of 7:53.01 over 3,000m in his last race of the 2021 track season. This result is a sigh of relief for Desgagnés, who recently finished a month of training at altitude in Flagstaff. 

(08/18/2021) Views: 1,041 ⚡AMP
by Marley Dickinson

Karla Del Grande, 67, has been named female athlete of the decade by World Masters Athletics

Toronto’s Karla Del Grande, a 67-year-old sprinter with multiple masters world records to her name, has been named the Female Athlete of the Decade (2010 to 2019) by World Masters Athletics (WMA).

Nominated alongside five other women who have run, jumped and thrown their way into the WMA record books, Del Grande was selected as the best of them all, adding yet another accolade to her already lengthy resume. 

As outlined on the WMA website, to be nominated for the Athlete of the Decade awards, athletes had to have broken a WMA record and won a WMA Championship in at least two different age groups in the previous decade. Del Grande checked these boxes many times over, as she set a whopping nine world records (five outdoor, four indoor) between 2010 and 2019 and won multiple gold medals at the world championships. 

Competing outdoors in the 2010s, Del Grande set the 100m and 200m world records in the W60 and W65 categories, and she added a W65 400m world best as well. Indoors, she ran to 60m (W60), 200m (W60 and W65) and 400m (W65) world records.

Additionally, Del Grande owns an incredible 17 Canadian indoor masters records and 12 national outdoor records, some of which date back to the early 2000s when, at the age of 49, she first began competing in masters athletics. 

This is not the first time Del Grande has been honoured as a masters athlete. In 2018 and 2019, the WMA named her the Female Sprint Athlete of the Year, and again in 2019, the NCCMA (North American, Central American and Caribbean Masters Athletics) gave her overall Female Athlete of the Year honours. She has also been inducted into the Ontario and Canadian Masters Athletics Halls of Fame. 

At 67, Del Grande still has a few years left in the W65 division to better her own world records, and while the 2020s have only just started, it shouldn’t be a surprise if she’s nominated for Athlete of the Decade once again come 2030. 

(03/23/2021) Views: 1,055 ⚡AMP
by Ben Snider-McGrath

Karla del Grande of Toronto set new world records in both the 100m and 200m for women aged 65-69 at the World Masters Athletics Championships

Karla del Grande breaks world records in both 100m and 200m at World Masters Athletics Championships in Malaga, Spain.  The Toronto runner has been racking up accolades since she began competing on the track in 2002 at age 49, Del Grande trains with Variety Village in Toronto. Del Grande ran 28.83 in the 200m and 14.04 in the 100m in Malaga. The previous records for both were held by Nadine O’Connor of the U.S. Del Grande also lowered the Canadian records in both distances earlier this summer in Surrey, B.C. Del Grande has a long history of success on the track at the masters level and has held numerous Canadian records in the sprints in various age categories. She has been named the Ontario Masters Athletics’ Female Masters Athlete of the Year six times. (09/10/2018) Views: 2,004 ⚡AMP