A few athletes from the provincial capital are coming home with medals after a quadrennial international event once held in the city. Edmonton’s Joshua Ofori and Amber-Jane Wall and Reed De’Aeth of Sherwood Park are bringing home bronze medals after competing in the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland. The 11-day multi-sport event held every four years wrapped up on Sunday. De’Aeth won bronze as a member of the three-on-three men’s wheelchair basketball team. The 23-year-old, who also represented the country at the 2024 Paris Paralympics, led the Canadian team with nine points, along with five assists and four rebounds, as they took the medal over the host Scots 19-9. Ofori and Wall are both boxers. Ofori earned bronze in men’s boxing (80 kilograms). The 22-year-old, who boxes out of St. Albert’s Marshall Boxing Club, lost in a unanimous decision in the category’s semifinal to Ankush Panghal of India, who went on to beat England’s Dimeji Shittu for gold. The 29-year-old Wall, who also boxes out of the Marshall club, took bronze in women’s boxing (51 kilograms) after losing by unanimous decision on Friday to India’s Sakshi Chaudhary in the category’s semifinal. One athlete from northern Alberta, Oliver Dawson, won silver in the men’s 200-metre breaststroke. The 18-year-old from Grande Prairie grabbed the medal with a time of 2:08:39, breaking Mike Brown’s 18-year-old Canadian record set at the Beijing Olympics by 0.45 seconds. Canada finished third in total medal haul with 62, including 19 golds, behind first-place Australia (171 total, 70 of them gold) and second-place England (110, 29 gold). Thirty-six countries took part. Edmonton hosted the Commonwealth Games 48 years ago. Preparations for the 1978 spectacle resulted in the construction and expansion of several regional facilities that still stand today, including the namesake main stadium, the Kinsmen Aquatic Centre, the Argyll Velodrome and the Strathcona Shooting Range. The first edition of the event, originally called the British Empire Games, was staged in Hamilton, Ont., in 1930.
