Levins Finishes 11th in Olympic 10k

LONDON - Southern Utah University's Cameron Levins, running for his native Canada, recorded an 11th-place finish in the men's 10,000-meters at the 2012 Summer Olympics on Saturday afternoon. The recently graduated senior missed out on a top-10 finish by a mere second, but crossed the line second among runners without ties to the African continent.

Great Britain's Mo Farah won the event, earning the gold medal with a time of 27:30.42 and was joined on the medal stand by the United State's Galen Rupp (27:30.90, silver) and Ethiopia's Tariku Bekele (27:31.43, bronze). Levins finished the race with a time of 27:40.68 which was more than 20 seconds faster than his finish in the 2012 NCAA Championship 10k where he finished first.

Levins qualified for the Olympics after recording a personal-best time of 27:27.96 earlier in the year - a time that would have been in the mix for a gold medal on Saturday.

"I now know I can run with these guys," he said after the race. "I can't kick with them yet but it certainly motivates me to work harder."

The Canadian's Olympic debut is similar to Rupp's when the American finished 13th in the 10k at the 2008 games in Beijing and later won both the 5k and 10k at the 2009 NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships. Levins captured both the 5k and 10k titles at the 2012 NCAA Championships and will aim to follow Rupp's path to the medal stand in his second Olympic games, looking to compete for Canada in 2016 when the Olympics will be hosted by Rio de Janiero, Brazil.

However, Levins 2012 games have yet to conclude with the former Thunderbird set to compete in the men's 5,000-meter prelimaries on Wednesday, August 8. Races are scheduled to begin at 3:45 am (MT) with recaps of the races anticipated to be avaiable during NBC's afternoon coverage of the games later that day. Fans should visit www.nbcolympics.com for times specific to their television provider.

Fans can watch a feature of Levins during KSL's news coverage of the games tonight beginning at approximately 11 pm.

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Players Mentioned

Cameron Levins: DISTANCE; 5' 11"; Redshirt Senior

Players Mentioned

Cameron Levins
: 5' 11"; Redshirt Senior
: DISTANCE