That’s the best way to describe the season that Quesnel high jumper Bazil Spencer had en route to winning a gold medal at the Canadian Track and Field Championships in Montreal this past weekend.
Spencer says a couple of training injuries really set him back…
“I tore a ligament in my ankle for one of them and then i got patella tendinitis, which is also called jumper’s knee in my jumping leg, so that was a big setback. It had a big impact because I couldn’t train for a lot of weeks because I just had to rest to recover and felt like I was losing a lot of what I had ”
Because of those injuries, Spencer went into the Canadian Championships just hoping to do well.
In the end the 17 year old won the under-20 gold jumping a personal outdoor best of 2.03 meters.
Looking ahead, he is going to take a couple of weeks off to recover before getting back to training.
He hopes to do well enough next season to land a scholarship in the U.S, and his long term goal is to compete in the Olympics…
“For high jump you usually get to your peak when you are around 28 or 29 because it’s just so technical, like you can have vertical, but you have to be technically perfect to get over the highest heights.”
Spencer says if he can jump a little higher next year, he could qualify for the World Junior Championships in Kenya.