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2017's big sporting event: Jerome a one-shot wonder?

The Harry Jerome Track Classic captured lightning in a bottle. It’s name was Andre De Grasse.
Harry Jerome Classic
A runner speeds past the packed grandstand at last June's Harry Jerome Classic track and field meet at Percy Perry Stadium. For the first time in years, the event was sold out in advance.

The Harry Jerome Track Classic captured lightning in a bottle. It’s name was Andre De Grasse.

But just like the speed of the Canadian Olympic sprinter whose star power attracted more than 3,000 athletics’ fans to Percy Perry Stadium on a warm June night, the event’s stop in Coquitlam was fleeting.

Doug Clement, the chair of the Achilles Track and Field Society that organizes the annual meet of Canadian and international athletes, said his organization is commited to returning the Jerome meet to Swangard Stadium in Burnaby next year. Not that he wouldn’t want to recapture the excitement and electricity the event generated in Coquitlam.

“The reception we got in Coquitlam was beyond our wildest dreams,” Clement said of the competition that was sold out three weeks in advance — a first for the Jerome. “It was maybe the best Jerome ever in terms of crowd involvement.”

But Percy Perry’s 1,400 seats just aren’t enough.

The interest generated by De Grasse and other top athletes on their way to London for the World Track and Field Championships shows there’s a market for top-level track and field in the Lower Mainland that’s too big for the little grandstand at Percy Perry Stadium, Clement said. Combined with the financial investment the Achilles Society has made in building a new world-class running track at Swangard fates the Jerome’s return to Swangard.

But, Clement said, last summer’s experience in Coquitlam has showed him the core of support for track and field events may have moved east from Vancouver where vibrant clubs like the Coquitlam Cheetahs are building a base of young athletes who are also fans eager to see their track heroes in action.

“Their members, their kids and parents, were a huge part of this,” Clement said of the Cheetahs, who provided many of the volunteers that helped stage the Jerome and tend to the athletes, as well as crowded the track to get close to De Grasse after his event. “We have to be flexible and recognize the center of the Lower Mainland is now closer to the Coquitlams and lower Fraser Valley area and not in the center of Vancouver, that’s for sure.”

That realization, and lessons learned from a successful marketing campaign that highlighted easy access from SkyTrain to Percy Perry Stadium, could lead to changes the way the Jerome is pitched in the future.

Clement said Swangard’s proximity to the Patterson SkyTrain station in Burnaby has never been highlighted, and the walking distance is about the same as the stroll from the Douglas-Lafarge station on the Evergreen Extension to Percy Perry.

And if the crowds turn out to Swangard again in force, Clement isn’t ruling out the possibility there could be room in the market for a second event sometime in the future.

“If we were to have a second event, then we’d have to look at Coquitlam,” he said.