PARIS — Cam Levins will take off Friday night at 11 p.m. PT in the 2024 Olympic Games men’s marathon as probably the most enigmatic of the several Island athletes competing in the 2024 Olympic Games — the epitome of the classic adage of the loneliness of the long-distance runner.
He runs to his own beat. Sometimes it is beating so hard that he has set both the Canadian and North American records at two hours, 05 minutes, 36 seconds. Other times, it is barely an echo, as when he won the Royal Victoria Half-Marathon in record time in October only to drop out of the New York City Marathon in November after being featured in the New York Times as one of the favourites.
You can picture the 35-year-old runner from Black Creek, who largely prefers training on his own and racking up volume kilometres beyond many of his compatriots, either winning an Olympic medal in Paris or dropping out of the Games race midway. Both scenarios are entirely plausible. This is a guy who went from suffering through the Tokyo Olympics marathon in 72nd place in 2021 to finishing fourth in the World Athletics Championships the following year in Eugene, Oregon, and lowering his own Canadian record to 2:07:09.
When it comes to Levins, you take the form chart and burn it, because it will tell you nothing about how he will fare Friday Pacific Time — Saturday morning in France — along the Olympic course from Paris City Hall to the Palace of Versailles and then returning along a different route to the finish line at Les Invalides. The latter is where Napoleon is buried. In his third Olympics, Levins will be hoping his Games hopes won’t be buried there also.
The field is brutal and includes two-time Rio and Tokyo Olympics gold-medallist Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya, with a head-spinning personal best of 2:01:09, looking for the three-peat: “I trust I will win that gold medal in Paris,” Kipchoge told Olympics.com. Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia has also run sub-2:02 at 2:01:41 while Benson Kipruto of Kenya has clocked 2:02:16 and Tamirat Tola of Ethiopia 2:03:39.
“Anytime I get to put on a Canadian singlet and compete at the Olympics, or the world championships, is always really exciting,” said Levins , in a statement.
“I live for being able to compete on these big stages and face the very best in the world, and the Olympics is the peak of that.”
Levins’ coach, Jim Finlayson of Victoria, has flown to France to guide his runner in the Olympic race.
This might be the career conclusion for Levins of a long journey that began in Grade 7 running with the Comox Valley Cougars Track Club. He became the Island and ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ high school cross-country champion with the G.P. Vanier Secondary Towhees of Courtenay and the 2012 NCAA Div. 1 champion on the track in both the 5,000 and 10,000 metres with the Southern Utah University Thunderbirds.
Levins’ iconoclastic belief in near-extreme volume training carried him to the finals of both the 5,000 and 10,000 metres at the 2012 London Olympics. The Islander won a bronze medal in the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games in the 10,000 metres at historic Hampden Park. But a torn tendon in his left foot, followed by surgery, kept Levins out of the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Levins’ return to running, and switch from track to road, was nothing short of spectacular in 2018 when Levins ran 2:09:25 and broke, by 44 seconds in his debut marathon, Jerome Drayton’s hallowed Canadian record of 2:10:09 that had stood for more than four decades. The second chapter of Levins’ career had begun. How it likely ends will be known in the wee hours Pacific Time, unless of course, he sticks around for Los Angeles 2028 at age 39. When it comes to Levins, and his unorthodox running career, anything is possible.
If he reaches the podium, Levins would become the fourth Island or Island-based athlete or team to medal in the Paris Olympics following gold-medallist hammer-thrower Ethan Katzberg of Nanaimo and the silver-medallist Langford-based Canadian women’s rugby sevens team and silver-medallist North Cowichan-based Canadian women’s rowing eights team.
