More than anything, he wanted to go out with gold.
Unfortunately, D.P. Todd student Kevin Gaiesky didn't have his best day at the B.C. high school track and field championships and had to be content with bronze.
At provincials, held at Burnaby's Swangard Stadium on the weekend, the Grade 12 Gaiesky finished third in the 1,500-metre race walk, behind winner Ben Thorne and runner-up Graham Landells.
In Grades 9, 10 and 11, Gaiesky strode to silver at provincials.
"It wasn't a good race," he said of this year's result. "It's hard to say, really, what happened. The only thing that I'm really glad about is that my form really improved because last year my form wasn't that good. I might have been a lot slower this time but now I've got that base I can work on again for next year and just getting faster and improving."
Gaiesky's clocking was six minutes 55.98 seconds, well off his personal-best time of 6:21. Landells finished in 6:55.70 and Thorne, from Kitimat, set a new B.C. record of 5:34.17.
On the bright side, Gaiesky now owns four medals from the high school provincials. In itself, that is an impressive accomplishment.
"I definitely would have wanted to bring back the gold sometime in there but four silver medals and a bronze is still something that's pretty cool," he said.
Gaiesky, 17, will attend UNBC next school year and plans to go to UBC -- a hotbed for race walkers -- the following year.
Now that Gaiesky's high school career is behind him, he's looking toward the junior national championship meet a few weeks from now in Calgary.
At the high school provincials, Gaiesky was the only medalist from the north central zone. Other local highlights from the championships were as follows: Emma Balazs (Kelly Road), fourth in the 1,500m steeplechase, fifth in the 1,500m run and eighth in the 3,000m run; Duncan Elliot (Duchess Park), seventh in the triple jump; and Sean Gaiesky (D.P. Todd), eighth in the 1,500m run.
