Simon Whitfield didn’t think he would win the Canadian Cross Country Championships, and he didn’t. But the Olympic gold medallist in the triathlon helped draw a huge crowd to the event, held in damp, chilly conditions at the University of Guelph Arboretum.
A fluid and enthralled audience numbering in the several hundreds and clad in toques and layers, flowed from one vantage point to the next Saturday, as the country’s top distance runners wound around the undulating course.