high school championship cross country attracted a scholarship offer from Southern Utah University (SUU). A couple of third-place finishes in the B.C. He mostly ran by himself, always heeding his mother’s warnings to avoid the forest trails when cougar and bear sightings were posted. Levins grew up in Black Creek, British Columbia, a small town on Vancouver Island. Levin’s road to these results wound through surgeries on two stress fractures and a heel spur, coaching changes, being dropped by his sponsor before the 2021 world championships, and a generous dose of self-doubt. Being competitive until the very end in a very high profile marathon is a big step forward again.” “I was very close to the win, and I think that was probably my biggest takeaway. “Tokyo was an improvement over Eugene,” Levins said. That performance was a real surprise to anyone who had witnessed his dreadful 71st place finish at the 2021 Olympics. The first validation that Levins had turned a corner in his career came last July when he finished fourth in the world championships in Eugene, Oregon, with a then-Canadian record of 2:07:09.

Moreover, battling with the leaders into the last mile and winding up fifth in Tokyo’s World Marathon Major field also validated-for the second time in eight months-that he could legitimately call himself a world-class marathoner, something he had been working toward for the better part of a decade.

Not only had he lowered his personal best by a minute and a half, but the time was a new Canadian record and, as he would discover in the post-race doping control room, the fastest time ever run by a North American-two seconds under Khalid Khannouchi’s 21-year-old mark and faster than Galen Rupp, Meb Keflezighi, or Ryan Hall on a record-eligible course.

When Cam Levins passed under the Tokyo Marathon finish line clock on March 5, the clock read 2:05:36.

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