Excellence
SFU sprinter Marie-Éloïse Leclair punches ticket to Summer Olympics
The whirlwind year continues for Simon Fraser University speedster Marie-Éloïse Leclair, who is headed to Paris this month as a member of the Canadian Olympic women’s 4x100m relay team.
Leclair was named to the pool of five sprinters on the 4x100m team after her 3rd place finish in the 100m at the national Olympic track and field trials in Montreal at the end of June. The relay team will travel and train in Barcelona before heading to Paris for the Summer Olympics, which runs July 26 to August 11.
“Whether it's 100m at the Olympics or the 100m in my backyard – it's the same distance, the same race,” says Leclair, a fourth-year SFU student in the Faculty of Health Sciences. “The stakes are different, obviously, but it's the same distance. All I can do is run as best as I can. If I stay focused on that, I think it's easy to not get too wrapped up into everything else and be overwhelmed.”
It has been an incredible year for the 21-year-old student-athlete from Montreal. In May, she was a last-minute substitution (because of an injury to a teammate) to Canada’s 4x100m relay team that qualified for the Summer Games at the World Athletics Relays in the Bahamas. Canada’s women’s 4x100m last qualified for the Olympics in 2016.
“I couldn't believe it,” Leclair says of the race in the Bahamas. “It was crazy. It was my first big meet and just everything was happening all at once – it didn’t feel real. But it was such a good moment and one I will remember forever.”
'I am really proud of going to SFU. Even if it’s a smaller school and in Canada, I would pick it 1,000 times over.'
Marie-Éloïse Leclair
In June, competing for SFU at the national 2024 NCAA Division II Outdoor Track & Field Championships, Leclair won two first-team All-American honours with a fifth-place finish in the 200m and a seventh-place finish in the 100m. Later in the month, she was named Northwest Athletic Conference (GNAC) female athlete of the year, finishing her season as the all-time GNAC record holder in the 100m and 200m outdoor, as well as the 60m, 200m and 400m indoor events.
“I'm really proud to be part of SFU,” Leclair says. “Sometimes on national teams it feels like everyone has gone to big U.S. schools and were stars of NCAA Division I track. They’re often like, ‘What’s the school?’ ‘I haven’t heard about it.’
“But I’m there, competing at the same level. It’s important to me, because I am really proud of going to SFU. Even if it’s a smaller school and in Canada, I would pick it 1,000 times over.”
Despite her blistering speeds on the track, she remembers a time when she wasn’t the fastest. Growing up, she joined track in Grade 7 and while she was fast, she had yet to grow and says her competition was much stronger and faster. Though she wasn’t winning, she enjoyed competing and stuck with it.
Leclair, who was the top 400m runner and 400m hurdler in Quebec in her final year of high school, was recruited by SFU head coach Brit Townsend and sprint coach Tom Dickson and began her university journey at SFU in January 2021 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
She chose SFU because it allowed her to compete in the 400m distance against NCAA competition, while still living and learning in Canada. She is now in her fourth year, majoring in health sciences with a minor in Indigenous studies.
It was her sprint coach, Dickson, who convinced her to try the shorter distances – the 60m, 100m and 200m. And she excelled.
“She is hardworking and challenges herself every day,” says Townsend, SFU’s head coach for track and field and cross-country. “She is pleasant to be around and treats everyone around her with respect and compassion. Tom Dickson and Marie have a great working relationship and he has been instrumental in her progress and success over the last four years.
“We worked hard to make sure we kept up the annual plan even during Covid and we are enjoying that success of that now.”
Last year – her first competing the 100m and 200m – she went to nationals and placed sixth, putting her in the range of athletes who would be considered for the 4x100m relay team. Her finish and subsequent invitation to a national team training camp in Florida planted the seed in her head that she could me among the sprinters selected to compete in the Olympics, should Canada qualify.
“It’s cliché to say, but I wouldn’t be here without the team at SFU. We’ve gone through so much together – my coach, the support staff, weight coach and physio, it’s hard to thank them individually, but they’re a big part of it and I recognize I wouldn’t be here without them.”
