The track and field world championships are approaching — here's how Canadians are preparing this weekend

CBC

3 days ago

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With the world championships in Tokyo just a month away, some of Canada's top track and field athletes will be competing in one of two international meets over the next few days. Here's a look at them:
Mitton, sprinters warm up in the Bahamas
Indoor shot put world champion Sarah Mitton and a strong contingent of sprinters will lead a team of 30 Canadians at the North American, Central American and Caribbean (NACAC) championships in the Bahamas from Friday through Sunday.
For some athletes, this meet will serve as a tune-up for the world championships. For others, it's their final chance to hit the automatic qualifying standard or to improve their spot in the world rankings, which is another way to get into the worlds.
The Canadian squad includes 17 Olympians and 19 athletes who have competed at the world championships. Headlining the group is Mitton, who took silver at the 2023 outdoor worlds before capturing back-to-back indoor world titles; and sprinters Jerome Blake, Aaron Brown and Brendon Rodney, who won the Olympic men's 4x100m gold in Paris last summer alongside Andre De Grasse.
Brown and Rodney will both run the 200m at the NACACs, while Blake does the 100m. Blake clocked a 9.97 in June for the fastest time by a Canadian this year.
Blake and De Grasse (9.98) are the only Canadians who have achieved the men's 100m world championship qualifying time of 10 seconds flat. Blake and Brown have met the 200m standard of 20.16, while De Grasse will likely get in by way of his world ranking. The men's 4x100 team qualified in May at the World Athletics Relays, where they took bronze behind South Africa and the United States.
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On the women's side, Audrey Leduc will compete in both the 100m and 200m at the NACACs after winning both titles at the Canadian championships in Ottawa earlier this month. In the 100, she'll face Sade McCreath, who matched Leduc's national record in June before Leduc reclaimed it with a 10.94 last month in Edmonton.
Leduc and McCreath (10.95) have already qualified for the 100m at the world championships with their times (the bar for women is 11.07). Leduc needs a 22.57 in the 200m for an automatic spot (she ran a 22.55 at the national championships with an illegal tailwind), though her current world ranking looks good enough to get her in.
Other Canadian Olympians competing in the Bahamas include men's hammer thrower Rowan Hamilton, who was ninth in Paris last year, and middle-distance runners Charles Philibert-Thiboutot and Lucia Stafford, who both ran the 1,500m in Paris. Here's the full list of Canadians in the NACACs and here's the schedule.
Rising star Sutherland hopes to make her Diamond League debut
Canada's Savannah Sutherland enjoyed a wonderful Olympic debut last summer in Paris. A day before her 21st birthday, she qualified for the women's 400m hurdles final, and she went on to finish seventh while sharing the track with repeat gold medallist Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone of the United States and world champion Femke Bol of the Netherlands, who took the bronze.
Then, this June, the University of Michigan senior broke McLaughlin-Levrone's collegiate record along with the Canadian record by clocking 52.46 seconds to win gold at the NCAA championships for the second time in three years. That time earned Sutherland an automatic berth in the world championships, and it remains the fastest in the world this year by anyone other than McLaughlin-Levrone and Bol.
Sutherland didn't stop there, qualifying for the flat 400m at the world championships with a personal-best 50.62 in Edmonton last month to get under the standard of 50.75.
In preparation for her second world championships (she reached the semis in the 400m hurdles in 2023), Sutherland planned to make her Diamond League debut this weekend in Poland, where she would face Bol in the 400m hurdles. But her first taste of track's premier global circuit is now up in the air after she was a late scratch from the flat 400 at Tuesday's Continental Tour meet in Budapest due to an unspecified injury.
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Sutherland's coach told CBC Sports' Doug Harrison that she's still preparing to race the 400m hurdles on Saturday, and her name remained on the official startlist as of this afternoon. But she might remain cautious with the world championships approaching.
If Sutherland doesn't compete, there will be no Canadians in action in Poland. But there's a heck of a men's 100m on tap as Olympic champion Noah Lyles takes on silver medallist Kishane Thompson of Jamaica and American rival Kenny Bednarek. It's the first meeting between Lyles and Bednarek since The Shove following Lyles' 200m victory at the U.S. championships.
Thompson (9.75) and Bednarek (9.79) have the two fastest times in the world this year. But Lyles, who's also the reigning world champ, has raced the 100m just twice after returning from a three-month absence in July.
The women's 100m features world champion Sha'Carri Richardson vs. fellow American Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, who ran a world-leading 10.65 at the U.S. championships earlier this month. Richardson publicly apologized Monday to her boyfriend Christian Coleman after her recent arrest for allegedly assaulting him at an airport. Coleman will also be in Poland to run the men's 100m.
You can watch the meet live Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. ET on CBCSports.ca and CBC Gem. Here's the full schedule and startlists.