By: Kaja Antic, Sports Writer
Some of us take the summer semester off, preferring to work or go on vacation. Others take classes to fill the time, sweating the whole way to campus. If you’re Marie-Éloïse Leclair, you go to the Olympic Summer Games.
The Red Leafs track and field star experienced her first Olympiad as part of Team Canada’s women’s 4x100m relay team, competing at the Stade de France in Paris.
“It was the first time I went to a competition with other sports because I’ve only been in big track events, not multi sports,” Leclair said in an interview with The Peak. “It was 10 out of 10 for sure.”
Though her main focus was on her scholastic season, Leclair attended a Team Canada camp between indoor and outdoor competitions with SFU.
“They invited me for a camp at the end of March that was in Florida,” she explained. “Unfortunately, I got a tiny injury when I went there so that kind of set me back.”
Despite the injury, Leclair was “just happy to be invited.”
Leclair described how training with SFU was not all that different from training with Team Canada, albeit in a setting more focused on the relay portion — which Leclair also competes in with SFU in both the women’s 4x100m and 4x400m relay teams.
“We had a two week training camp in Barcelona [before the Olympics] where we solely focused on the relay, so that was a lot of relay practices.”
Leclair described the relay training as more “specific” with Team Canada rather than with the Red Leafs, but chalked it up to the event being the “main focus” and participants having more experience in the relay specifically.
“We can really go into the nitty-gritty and these super specific details, but it’s pretty similar. I mean, the main ingredient of really any race is being fast, right?
“At SFU, we’re really lucky because we get so many opportunities,” Leclair noted, discussing how being a Red Leaf prepared her for the Paris games. “The opportunities we get here made a big difference in being familiar in the environment that are international meets.”
During the Great Northwest Athletic Conference Outdoor Track & Field Championships in May, Leclair won the individual 100m and 200m women’s sprint events, along with a second place 4x100m relay finish and a first place 4x400m relay finish with the Red Leafs. A month later, she was preparing for the flurry of athletic competition before the Olympic Games with a Diamond League meet in London, and the aforementioned training camp in Barcelona.
While Leclair was not able to fully participate in the Paris festivities due to her event taking place near the end of the competition, she was able to try one of the hot topics in the dining hall: the mythical, TikTok-viral chocolate muffins.
“They were good. I’m not a big cake person so I was like, ‘I feel like it’s gonna be too much,’ but no, it was super good.” She also got to meet the popular “muffin man,” Norwegian swimmer Henrik Christiansen. “It’s funny because everyone’s like, ‘did you see celebrities?’ And I’m like, ‘the muffin man? Does that count?’”
Education wise, Leclair is working on graduating, taking five courses this semester along with her training regimen. Now heading into her final year with the Red Leafs, she looks forward to building on her record-breaking performances in NCAA competition.
“I just really want to make the most of it, and like I said, leave my mark,” Leclair described the impact of her final year on the Red Leafs track. “I feel like I already have in a way, but there’s always more to do so if I can go to championships and break my own records, break other records, and place higher than I have in the past.”
