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Club built Olympic talent from the china wholesale nfl jerseys ground upThey jabbing pieces of paper at him, waving Canadian flags and chirping for autographs. A few thrust forward their arms, hoping he scrawl on their skin.Scott Thomas, the man who built the Speed River Track and Field Club into one of the most potent distance running groups ever assembled in Canada, is surrounded by elementary school students in a gym at the University of Guelph.The students are treating him like a celebrity, hounding the unassuming coach as much as they did the athletes at last week news conference to announce Canada Olympic marathon team.Scott Thomas has to be thinking, how did this happen?Speed River sent two runners to the Beijing Olympics in 2008. This summer, his club seems poised to send five to London. In 2016, the goal is six. That kind of success has people asking: How can one club, working with some of the worst facilities in the country, produce such a bonanza of elite running talent?On top of Olympic bound marathoners Reid Coolsaet and Eric Gillis, Speed River Taylor Milne, the former Olympian; steeplechaser Alex Genest; and middle distance runner Hilary Stellingwerff are favourites to make the London Olympic team.ain bragging if you can do it. We intend to send people to the Olympics, and we do it, said Scott Thomas, quoting Dizzy Dean, the brash folk hero who pitched for St. Louis during the Depression.Articulate and modest, Scott Thomas is nothing like Dean, baseball most outspoken ace of the 1930s. But he likes the pitcher famous expression as a way to explain how the running club he started 15 years ago on a shoestring budget has turned itself into one of the most successful Canada has ever seen.The secret to Speed River success appears simple. It sets incremental targets, works hard toward them, focuses on the details, and wins races without swagger.Scott Thomas, a former fisheries biologist and coach at the University of Victoria, made a leap of faith coming back to the University of Guelph, his former school, in 1997.He took over a struggling running program, with little more than a $3,000 salary and a simple question: Why can Canadian runners be as fast as anyone else in the world?muscle can work as well as anyone else muscle on the planet. And we know our intellect can, Scott Thomas said. a question of can we pull all this together and create a culture that normalizes that?All he did was build the University of Guelph cross country team into the most dominant in Canada. At the same time, he created the Speed River club to give his athletes a way to keep competing in the summer season, recruiting a support staff of volunteers along the way.Although the general public may just be noticing now, Speed River evolution into a running powerhouse was not an overnight success. It been brewing for years, with a core of athletes and trainers working with little more than outdated nhl jerseys china facilities and a dream.don get up in the morning thinking, we do this, we get attention. I think you get up for the purity of trying to chase excellence, Scott Thomas said.But Speed River athletes are getting attention.Coolsaet and Gillis are the darlings of Canada running community, on the brink of becoming household names. Stellingwerff, Milne and Genest are right behind them. And there are others breathing down their necks.This weekend, Stellingwerff and Milne are racing in Jamaica, chasing the Olympic standard time that would book their ticket to London. Genest, who already nailed the tough A standard last summer in Barcelona, is in Brazil, hoping to clinch his second B standard time, which would guarantee his trip to the Games.All three wanted to work with Scott Thomas because he could make them faster. Things just seem to click with him.Milne is a northern Ontario boy who grew up in Callander, a small town near North Bay on Lake Nipissing. He played the usual sports baseball, hockey, basketball and football and was always one of the fastest kids on the playground. He didn run seriously until high school.That when the school cross country coach noticed Milne running drills for the football team and asked if he be a fill in at an upcoming track meet. Milne agreed. At the city championships a week later, he won the race.He dumped football and ran his way to an athletic scholarship in the United States, but was thinking about quitting when college finished. Milne returned home to Callander and spent the summer partying with his buddies, trying to figure out what he wanted to do. He fell out of shape and thought about hanging up his track shoes for good.Then came a call from Chris Moulton, manager for Speed River. Moulton convinced him to come to Guelph and talk to Scott Thomas, who had created a program at Speed River for runners who had finished university.was an excellent salesman. I moved down to Guelph three days later, Milne said.Milne immediately bought into the Speed River ethic.think you be hard pressed to find a group out there mlb jerseys china that works harder, said Milne, a 2008 Olympian in the 1,500 metre race. just want when people think of Canadian distance running for the word to pop in their heads.Genest was a Quebec track star who drew a lot of attention at a young age. A converted hurdler from Lac aux Sables, he started steeplechase when he was 15. He made the Quebec provincial team in his first year in the event. In 2003, he came sixth at the junior world championships.He left all that behind and moved to Guelph to work with Scott Thomas, a tough decision for a French speaking athlete going to an Anglophone city.just knew I was missing something. I needed a change, and Guelph ended up being the best thing I ever done, Genest said.