2023 Camel City Elite Pro and College Fields Announced

Pros to battle for over $80k in prize money and bonuses

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – January 31, 2023 – Now entering its 11^th year of existence, Camel City Elite continues to offer a blend of some of the fastest professional and collegiate distance runners in the country.  This year’s races are all wide open with no clearcut favorites in any event.  This could make for some of the most exciting Camel City Elite Races to date.

Camel City Elite will be held at JDL Fast Track in Winston-Salem on Saturday, February 4 at 2 pm EST.  It will also be live streamed via RunnerSpace as part of their Plus subscription package. 

Camel City Elite will once again feature some of the best prize money in the country, with $6000 for first place, $4000 for second, $2000 for third, $1000 for fourth place and on down to 8^th place.  Additionally, there are $1000 time bonuses to the winner in each event as well as $1000 flat track world record bonuses.

Professionally, athletes representing Adidas, On and Under Armour will be featured, while the colleges represented will include BYU, Charlotte, Duke, Furman, NC State, North Carolina, Virginia, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest.

The women’s 3000m will be the first race of the day and will feature Susan Ejore (Under Armour Baltimore Distance), Eilish Flanagan (Finn Valley AC) and Hannah Steelman (On).  They will try to hold off NCAA cross country third-place finisher Kelsey Chmiel of NC State, who holds the college facility record at JDL.  But don’t sleep on Riley Chamberlain of BYU who just ran 4:33 for the mile last week.  Additionally, ACC foes Margot Appleton of Virginia and Brynn Brown of North Carolina should be vying for an NCAA qualifying time.

The men’s 3000m will feature some fast company.  Unattached athletes Athanas Kioko and Alex Ostberg can boast 5k PRs of 13:13 and 13:18, respectively.  But Willy Fink (Under Armour Baltimore Distance) comes in with plenty of JDL flat track experience, having won the Camel City mile twice and competing in the 3000m as a collegian.  They will battle Virginia Tech’s Antonio Lopez Segura, who set the college facility record last year.  Yasin Sado of Virginia, Luke Tewalt of Wake Forest and Nick Scudder of Charlotte should also be in the mix.  And NC State will have a quartet of athletes in the race, led by 13:23 5k runner Ian Shanklin, who ran at JDL in high school while attending nearby Page High School in Greensboro.

The women’s 800m will feature sub 2:00 professionals Charlene Lipsey and Brenna Detra squaring off against the 1-2 finishers at the 2022 NCAA Indoor Championships:  Lindsey Butler of Virginia Tech and Claire Seymour of BYU.

The men’s 800 will feature three athletes from Under Armour Mission Run:  Vincent Crisp, Edose Ibadin and CJ Jones, who will handle the pacing duties.  Derek Holdsworth of Bell Lap Elite will try to break up the Under Armour trio.

The women’s mile features Anna Camp-Bennett of Adidas and Susan Ejore of Under Armour Baltimore Distance.  They will have their hands full with Amina Maatoug of Duke,  Samantha Bush of NC State and the BYU duo of Heather Hanson and Carmen Alder.  Another athlete to watch out for is Amaris Tyynismaa who will be competing unattached while she waits for her transfer from Alabama to NC State to be complete.  Anyone of these collegians could upset the pros and win the whole race!

Next, in the men’s mile, Vincent Ciattei, Robert Heppenstall (Reebok Boston), Festus Lagat (Under Armour Mission Run) and Sean Peterson (New Balance Boston) will vie for the top professional spot.  But will it be enough to win the race and claim the $6000 prize?  It will be tough with athletes like Nick Dahl (Unattached/Duke) and Thomas Vanoppen (Wake Forest) in the field.

Last year was the first year of the middle school mile races, and a new crew of middle schoolers looks to win the race in front of the capacity crowds.  Can the girls break Kasey Dingman’s 5:14.80?  Can the boys break Hunter Bates’ 5:02.00?  With the fields assembled this year, the odds are good that both of those times get broken this year!

Admission for the event is $10 for adults, $5 for students and kids 12 and under are FREE.  Doors will open at 8 am and the college portion of the meet will start at 9:30 am.

Camel City Elite will be streamed live online at www.jdlfasttrack.com as part of the RunnerSpace +Plus subscription package which starts at $12 a month.

ABOUT JDL FAST TRACK (www.jdlfasttrack.com)

JDL Fast Track is a privately owned facility that is one of the premier indoor track and field venues in the southeast. Opened in 2012, the facility houses a 200-meter oval track with a Mondotrack FTX surface—the same surface used at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. With a seating capacity of 1,700, ten HD televisions showing real-time field event results, and five high definition projector screens for video playback, JDL Fast Track offers fans a unique track and field experience.

To date, JDL Fast Track has hosted six national championships:  2014 NCAA Division II, 2015 and 2022 NCAA Division III, 2015 and 2019 USATF Masters Indoor and 2016 NJCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships.