STOCKHOLM — Aaron Brown sprinted to victory in the men's 200 metres and Gabriela Stafford set a Canadian record in the women's 5,000 metres Thursday at a Diamond League track and field event.
Brown, from Toronto, won with a season-best time of 20.06 seconds, ahead of Turkey's Ramil Guliyev (20.40) and Trinidad and Tobago's Jereem Richards (20.45).
"I know I'm one of the best starters in the world in the 200 metres because of my 100-metre background, so these guys are really strong at the end so I made sure I put some distance on them at the beginning and then tried to hang on," Brown said.
"That's the game plan — Guliyev is a strong finisher, he's run me down a bunch of times so I tried to put some distance on him and hold on."
It's the second straight Diamond League win and third straight podium finish for Brown in the 200. He won the 200 in Shanghai two weeks ago for his first career Diamond League victory, and finished third in Doha, Qatar, on May 3.
Stafford, from Toronto, finished just off the podium in fourth place with a Canadian-record time of 14 minutes 51.59 seconds. That time came just under Courtney Babcock's previous record of 14:54.98 set at the 2003 IAAF World Championships in Paris.
Kenya's Agnes Tirop won the race in 14:50.82, followed by Ethiopia's Fantu Worku (14:51.31) and Kenya's Lilian Rengeruk (14:51.34).
In other Canadian results, Toronto's Crystal Emmanuel finished sixth in the women's 200.
The Canadian Press
Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version had the incorrect year for Babcock's record.
