Nova Scotian shot putter Sarah Mitton finishes 2nd at Indoor Tour Gold Madrid
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CBC
5 days ago
- CBC
The track and field world championships are approaching — here's how Canadians are preparing this weekend
Social Sharing 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. Jerome Blake on becoming the fastest man in Canada ahead of Tokyo 2025 6 hours ago 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. Was Noah Lyles' stare down of Kenny Bednarek offside? 7 days ago 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 and CBC Gem. Here's the full schedule and startlists.
CBC
31-07-2025
- CBC
Different puzzles, same goal: How do track & field athletes plan out a world championship season?
Social Sharing The best track and field athletes in Canada will be in Ottawa this weekend with the goal of earning their place at September's World Athletics Championships in Tokyo. In theory, it all seems so simple for athletes: the nationals are in your competition calendar, so just make the travel arrangements, plan your training schedule, and show up in peak shape. But in practice, it's like spinning plates — Canadians have a multitude of events all over the globe and an incredible amount of logistics that accompany that schedule. Athletics Canada throws coach Richard Parkinson says balancing training and logistics is "like getting a 3,000-piece puzzle and not having all the pieces." One of the athletes Parkinson works with to piece that puzzle together is two-time world indoor champion, and four-time national champion in women's shot put, Sarah Mitton. "At the beginning of the year, we sit down and we start with the yearly training plan. Sarah and I work as a team. It's coach-led, athlete-focused, and in Sarah's case — because we've worked so closely together for eight years or nine years now —it's more of a collaboration, more of a team [effort]," Parkinson said. Parkinson and Mitton begin with the key, major competitions that they want her to have "peak performance or have performance-on-demand at." "This year, for instance, was the world indoor championships and outdoor world championships. Those are the two big key dates," Parkinson said. "Then we fill in the [next] priorities ...which for Sarah, would be the Diamond League meets." The planning process for a new season can begin as soon as final major meet from the following year finishes. For Parkinson, that means vacation time also includes a healthy amount of calendars and meet research. "Last September, I go to the lake and I'm on the dock with the computer and I'm writing the plan around hitting world championships [and] world indoor tour, because those are money [and] income meets for Sarah," he said. "Then we go to world outdoors, but then I've also got to plan the five Diamond League meets." Navigating a rookie season That's how a veteran approaches the season — a high world ranking helping lock down invitations to key meets, allowing early planning and knowing when they need to be at their competitive best. For rookies, there are no guaranteed spots in Diamond League start lists, and the process to map out a season of competition looks much different. Canadian sprinter Audrey Leduc signed with Adidas this year, so she's just starting her foray into scheduling a full season of pro meets. That means she's new to the scene and needs to be more flexible when it comes to invites. One of those invites came just days before she was to leave for her first European trip as a pro, and it was an offer she couldn't refuse. "[At the] last minute, the Diamond League said 'we have a spot,' maybe…like two days before I was leaving for Europe. They said 'we have a lane' so I was like, 'OK, I'm going to enter the Diamond League,'" she said. "You need to be adaptable, but you need to also consider that you have big meets coming up like nationals, like world championships … it's a long season so you need to think about which meets you want to do and don't overdo it." WATCH | Leduc helps Canada clinch women's 4x100m spot at world championships: Canadian women's 4x100m team clinches spot at world championships 3 months ago However, 26-year-old from Gatineau, Que., also needs to balance that willingness to race with only accepting meet invites when her body is ready to perform. Leduc said it's a "tricky" balance to strike – she wants to show that she's interested in taking invitations and competing, but can't risk accepting an invite when her body isn't ready to perform at a peak level. "If the Diamond League is calling, and you're like 'well, where is it, how fast can I get there, and how good am I going to be ready to run?'" Leduc said. "If you're in a block of training and you're in the middle of it, I don't think I will be able to say yes because I might be on load. "If you're on load and you're going to compete in a Diamond League, and you don't perform well, they might not invite you back." Canadians face tough travel schedule Travel time is also a major factor for Canadian athletes, as the bulk of the meets and prize money, are in Europe. When they're overseas, the full team that help athletes maintain their peak condition and recovery, like physiotherapists and massage therapists, stay behind. Leduc has improvised where she can, but it's another hurdle to clear when planning a competition schedule. "It's a bit difficult [when] you don't have your team ... because you're asking a lot of your body, but you don't have the same treatment that you have back home. But you're expected to perform on the track, so you need to find ways to make your body recover," Leduc said. "I have cups [for cupping therapy] and I have compression boots, I have a lot of stuff that can help me just recover on my own." Parkinson says some higher-level meets offer access to treatment professionals, but there is a level of unfamiliarity when doing body work on a pro athlete. "The Diamond League does provide some support staff for physio[therapy], but you don't know them until you get to use them. We're at that stage where we need to find something, because most of the massage and physio people like that do travel for meet to meet with a Diamond League," he said. "So we've got to get more familiar with some of those practitioners. You've had a bad massage, you've had a good massage, right? "You want to go to that person that you had a good massage with [because] we just don't want to risk having a bad one." Parkinson recalled that the shoe was on the other foot for some women's shot putters at the Prefontaine Classic this past June. "The women from Europe come to Oregon — which is even a little bit of an extra step for them because it's not on the East Coast — and they were like, 'oh, boy, the travel is exhausting.' We said, 'yeah, try doing it eight times a year.' "We kind of chuckled, and they got a sense of what Sarah goes through or any of the other Canadian athletes that go back and forth so many times for these meets," Parkinson said. "That's why we try to connect the meets so that when we go over[seas], you aren't just doing one-offs and coming back, that you go over [and] you've got a few in a row." Plans not set in stone Parkinson and Mitton recently had a wrinkle added to a planed grouping of overseas meets near world championship time. A meet in Beijing offering dual benefits of high-level competition and good prize money is now up in the air. "Now I'm finding out just yesterday that they have suspended invitations to all athletes and the meet might be cancelled," Parkinson said. "So what do we do to fill that gap between Zurich and going to Tokyo? That's a big I talked to Sarah's agent, and I'm World Athletics website for sanctioned competitions. "I'm having to be flexible, and then also the athlete, she has to learn to be flexible [about] where they have to be." It seems that the only consistent plan for any track and field athlete is planning to be flexible.
CTV News
14-07-2025
- CTV News
Canada's Sarah Mitton wins bronze at Diamond League stop in Monaco
Sarah Mitton, of Canada, celebrates after winning the gold medal in the women's shot put final at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Nanjing, China, Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian) MONACO — Canada's Sarah Mitton placed third in the women's shot put at the Diamond League meet in Monaco on Friday with a throw of 20.00 metres. Jessica Schilder of the Netherlands won with 20.39, and American Chase Jackson was second with 20.06. Mitton, the two-time reigning world indoor champion from Brooklyn, N.S., was coming off a silver-medal performance at last week's Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Ore., where she threw a season-best 20.39. Edmonton's Marco Arop, the reigning world champion in the men's 800 metres, finished fifth despite a season-best time of one minute 42.73 seconds. He entered the event on a roll after winning all three 800-metre races in the inaugural Grand Slam of Track. Kenya's Emmanuel Wanyonyi won in a world-leading and meet-record time of 1:41.44, followed by American Josh Hoey (1:42.01) and Algeria's Djamel Sedjati (1.42.20). The next Diamond League meet is set for July 19 in London. This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 11, 2025.
