Vernon's Bennison top N. American at world x-country championships

Hannah Bennison of Vernon led the Canadian women’s under-20 team to a sixth place finish at the Sunday’s International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) World Cross Country Championships in Kampala, Uganda.

The 17-year-old finished the six-kilometre event in 23rd place among 103 international runners with a time of 20 minutes 54 seconds and was the top competitor from North America.

Coached by Malindi Elmore of Kelowna, Bennison was one of 24 runners on the Canadian team that also included junior and senior men and senior women. The Okanagan Athletics Club member had qualified for the world event by winning a second straight U20 national title held in November.

She was followed across the finish line by team scorers Brogan MacDougall of Kingston, Ont., (30th), Martha MacDonald of Toronto (32nd) and Hanna Johnston of Thunder Bay, Ont., (52nd). The sixth-place result is the third best team finish for the women’s U20 team in Canadian history. The 1989 and 2008 U20 women’s teams both finished fifth.

The U20 event, run in temperatures hovering around the 26C mark (65% humidity), was dominated by African runners, led by Letesenbet Gidey of Ethiopia who was clocked in 18:34. The top 14 finishers were either from Ethiopia, Kenya or Uganda.

Earlier this month at the North American, Central American and Caribbean Athletic Association (NACAC) cross country championships in Boca Raton, Fla., Bennison placed second among 24 competitors in the U20 five-kilometre race in a time of 16:44.14. Teammate MacDougall was first in 16:39.28. Canada won the team event.

Hampered by an IT Band Syndrome injury for most of 2016, Bennison, with only six weeks of full-time training, won her third straight B.C. high school cross country championship at West Kelowna’s Telemark course in November.

A year earlier, as a Grade 11 student at Vernon Secondary School, the diminutive (5-foot-1) runner broke a 31-year-old B.C. high school track record (held by West Kelowna’s Silverado Socrates (formerly Brenda Shackleton) in the 3,000 metres with a time of 9:33.44.

Later that summer at the IAAF world youth track and field championships in Cali, Columbia, Bennison ran to eighth place in the 3,000 metres and was the top North American finisher.