1987

1987

The men’s 1,500 metres captivated the crowd as 1984 Olympic 800-metre gold medallist Joaquim Cruz, venerable Kenyan Mike Boit and rising French star Cyrille Laventure dueled for supremacy with Canadian Dave Campbell, who a year earlier had taken a bronze medal at the Commonwealth Games. Campbell grabbed the lead with 300 metres remaining in the race but Cruz wore him down in the homestretch to take first place, followed by Boit and Laventure, then Campbell. Meantime, javelin man Tom Petranoff, ranked No. 1 in the world, set a meet and Canadian open record of 79.62 metres. Olympic silver medallist Kirk Baptise set a meet record of 20.56 seconds in winning the men’s 200 metres while Alice Brown won the women’s 100 metres in a meet record 11.32 seconds. World No.3-ranked Johnny Gray ignored the rain and won the men’s 800 metres. Earlier in the meet fan favourite Hugh Clifford, at age 80 the eldest runner in the meet, finished the masters men’s mile in 7 minutes, 19.8 seconds.