'It's just fun:' Baby Crawl event delights at Saskatoon Family Expo

Dozens of some of Saskatoon's fastest fledgling infants took over Prairieland Park Saturday to be crowned the Baby Crawl champion.

Dozens of some of Saskatoon's fastest fledgling infants took over Prairieland Park Saturday to be crowned the Baby Crawl champion.

While it may not be the Daytona 500, the BabyCrawl 500 (officially titled Baby Crawl) at the Saskatoon Family Expo featured some of the most competitive racing to happen on all fours, exclusively for infants under the age of one who are unable to walk.

"Everyone is out here having a good laugh," Lindsay Sanderson, the judge and host of Saturday's Baby Crawl, said. "It's just fun."

The BabyCrawl 500 has all the features one would expect of a stock car race -- the emotion, the drama and even the sporting miracles fit for the big screen.

During one heat on Saturday, one rug rat decided to put an end to the crawling and used those moments to take her first steps. However, the only prize for such an achievement in this event is disqualification.

"This is a baby crawl and not a baby walk," Sanderson said. "I always tell parents you win a new prize. You get to go home and baby-proof a whole new area of your house."

These high-performance athletes have yet to master verbal communication, which leaves parents and guardians finding more inventive ways to coax a performance of a lifetime out of these athletes. Some parents opted for dangling an old extension cord, a colourful coffee cup or the ever-popular iPhone in front of their youngster, hoping it could be just enough to get their child to cross the finish line first.