KAMLOOPS, B.C. — Evan Dunfee rewrote one of his own Canadian race walk records on Sunday.
The 28-year-old from Richmond, B.C., raced to a time of 38 minutes 54.2 seconds to win the B.C. Championships, breaking the previous mark of 39.21.3 he set in 2016.
The time is the fourth fastest in the world this season, and is a good gauge of where he's at ahead of a couple of big competitions.
"I had a bit of an easier week this week and training has been going really well," Dunfee said from Kamloops. "Everything has indicated that I was ready for a fast one, it just worked out that this race was timed well with training and that the weather was perfect. Light rain, no wind and fairly cool."
Dunfee will race at the Canadian championships in late July in Montreal, and then at next month's Pan American Games in Lima, where he'll compete in the 20K event.
"The goal for Pan Ams is certainly to win a medal, so I'm feeling confident that I'll be in the hunt," said Dunfee, who won gold at the Pan Am Games in 2015 in Toronto.
He'll race the 50K event at the world championships in late-September in Doha.
"Worlds the goal is to be up there as well and I've had some good 50km work so I'm confident that I'm back where I was in 2016 and ready to prove that Rio wasn't a fluke," he said.
Dunfee was fourth in a Canadian-record time in a controversial finish at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Hirooki Arai of Japan initially finished third. He was then disqualified for making contact with Dunfee, but Arai's medal was reinstated after an appeal. Dunfee opted not to launch his own appeal.
The Canadian Press
