When the five days of intense competition ended Sept. 17 at the 2023 Canadian FireFit National and World Championships in Sarnia, host Lambton College came away with six medals.
“Our team did really well,” said Sue Patrick, one of the coaches of Lambton’s 21-member student FireFit team. The team took part in the championships for the competition billed as the “toughest two minutes in sports,” in which firefighters and fire students compete in full gear on a course designed to mimic conditions they face on the job.
Lambton College won gold in women’s relay, gold for women’s team fastest time, silver in women’s two-person relay and gold in the college division men’s relay.
Lambton also won gold and silver in the mixed relay in a race between two teams from the college.
“That rounds it out at 41 medals this year for our team,” for the season, Patrick said. “I think it has got to be a record.”
Lambton, which trains firefighters at its LaSalle Line fire school, has sent student teams to FireFit competitions across Canada for several years and earned the chance to host the nationals and world event in Sarnia after hosting three regional contests in previous years.
The course was set up in a college parking lot and the five days of competition were open to the public.
“We had probably record crowds both final days,” said Patrick. “It was packed.”
The Sarnia event drew a total of 250 competitors from across Canada, the US, Poland and Germany.
The level of competition was very high, Patrick said.
“We had some incredibly fast teams here – fast individuals,” she said. “We had a lot of men running under a minute, 20 (seconds), which is extremely fast.”
But the men’s world record set several years ago by Ian Van Reenan, a Lambton College graduate, was still standing at the end of the weekend, Patrick said, though a Polish competitor came within 0.5 seconds of beating it.
The weather co-operated all five days and vendors and food trucks at the event reported good crowds, Patrick said.
“Everyone has been expressing how amazing it was,” she said.
“Our competitors were happy, FireFit was happy and Lambton College, as well. Everybody just seemed to be pretty pleased with the outcome.”
As part of upcoming improvements to outdoor student areas at the Sarnia campus, the college plans to build a permanent FireFit course, with tower, that the Lambton team can use for training.
“We knew it was a great spot,” FireFit’s Dale McRoberts said on the competition’s first day. “I’m glad we came here.”
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