The Louis-Riel Rebelles foursome of Zachary Jeggo, Daniel Cova, Ayoub Shanghai and Casey Sheftel are provincial high school champs in the open boys 4x400 relay after winning the final event at this OFSAA track and field championships on Saturday.
The quartet combined to cover the 1,600 metre distance in 3:18.17, beating second place Resurrection Catholic Secondary School by just under a second.
The Rebelles went into the final with the third best time in Friday's qualifying heats, finishing behind both Resurrection, which had the fastest qualifying time, and Sir Frederick Banting Secondary School from London which qualified second.
In Saturday's final, Shanghai ran a blistering first lap in 45.47 seconds to put the Rebelles in the lead. He then handed the baton off to Cova who was passed by a runner from St Marcellinus in the back stretch.
By the time Cova passed the baton to Sheftel, the Rebelles were in second place, trailing the frontrunners by about three metres.
By the time Sheftel finished the third leg of the relay, he had cut the deficit to less than a metre, which is where Jeggo took over.
Fresh off his win in the 400-metre hurdles earlier in the day, Jeggo managed to catch up to the St. Marcellinus runner with the first two or three strides and took over the lead which he was able to maintain until he was passed by Resurrection's anchor runner at the end of the backstretch.
Jeggo refused to let the Resurrection runner get away from him through the final turn and eventually caught him with 10 metres left in the race to win going away in a time of 3:18.17.
As brilliant as Jeggo's come from behind, homestretch run was, the team likely wouldn't have won without Shanghai's brilliant opening leg. To put his run in perspection, he ran the opening leg of Friday's qualifying heat in 48.13 seconds. That's a race-to-race improvement of more than two and a half seconds. It was also more than three seconds faster than his time in the 400 metre heats in which he narrowly missed out on making the final by less than two-tenths of a second.
The 4x400 relay win gave Jeggo a second gold medal to go along with the silver he won in senior boys 400 metres. It was also Cova's third medal of the meet, The Grade 12 student placed third in both the senior boys 1500 and 300 metres.
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