Kitchener, Ont. runner focused on Olympic finish in Paris

A long distance runner from Kitchener, Ont. will be making his debut at the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris.

Ben Flanagan already holds the Canadian record for both the five and 10 kilometre road races.

Now his sights are set on the Olympic podium.

“Making it isn’t enough, you want to do your best there,” he told CTV News on Thursday. “So you got to turn that switch on right away and get ready for the games themselves.”

Flanagan will first compete in the qualifier for the 5,000-metre race.

“My main objective is to make sure I’m racing twice while I’m in Paris,” he said. “I’m only there for about a week, I want to make the most of it.”

Getting to Olympics hasn’t been easy.

Flanagan had hoped to compete at the 2021 games in Tokyo but ultimately failed to qualify.

He called it the most motivating, yet disappointing, moment of his running career.

“Coming into this Olympic year there was definitely a little extra fire, waiting three years for another opportunity.”

Flanagan first started running as a teen and eventually joined his high school’s cross-country team.

“We trained out at Bechtel Park on a weekly basis, doing a bunch of loops around those forests and then the soccer fields,” he recalled. “It just becomes setting goals from that point forward.”

Flanagan’s first qualifying race is on August 7. If all goes according to plan, he’ll also hit the track on August 10.

“It’s a huge honour to represent Kitchener-Waterloo and obviously representing Canada overall is, you know, a very humbling experience.”