Canadians to watch at the track and field world championships

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The World Athletics Championships begin this Saturday in Tokyo — Friday in Canadian time zones. Here’s a look at the top Canadians, including an unprecedented four defending world champs, in action at the biggest track and field meet of the year.

Camryn Rogers and Ethan Katzberg (hammer throw)

In 2022, Rogers became the first Canadian to win a hammer-throw medal at the world championships. A year later, she upgraded from silver to gold as she and Katzberg captured Canada’s first world titles in the sport. They made more Canadian hammer history last summer in Paris, winning the country’s first Olympic golds while snapping a 112-year medal drought.

Rogers, 26, is the clear favourite to repeat as women’s world champion after winning eight of her nine international starts this year, including the last six in a row. Katzberg, 23, opened the year with five straight wins before finishing second at each of his past three international events. Olympic silver medallist Bence Halasz of Hungary beat him in the last two.

Marco Arop (800m)

It’s been a lot of fun to watch Arop develop from the raw youngster who flamed out in the semifinals of the 2021 Olympics to the more polished runner who took bronze at the following year’s world championships and then captured the world title in 2023. The 6-foot-4 Canadian came thisclose to adding an Olympic gold last summer, losing to his Kenyan rival Emmanuel Wanyonyi in a thrilling photo finish in Paris.

Wanyonyi, 21, is the man to beat in Tokyo. He won five of his seven Diamond League starts this year, including the season-ending Final for the third time in a row. Arop, who turns 27 this month, spent the early part of his season on the ill-fated Grand Slam Track tour, where he dabbled in the 1,500m along with the 800. After shifting back to the Diamond League in June, he finished fifth, second and fifth before placing third at the Final.

Damian Warner and Pierce LePage (decathlon)

Canada’s expectations for the 2024 Olympic decathlon were sky high after Warner won gold in 2021 and LePage captured the world title in 2023, with Warner taking the silver. But hopes of another 1-2 finish in Paris were crushed when a back injury caused LePage to miss the Games, and Warner’s repeat bid ended with a shocking foul-out in the pole vault. 

The worry now is that the championship window may have closed for both Canadians. Warner, 35, finished sixth at the prestigious Hypo Meeting in Austria this year after winning it eight times. The 29-year-old LePage, who underwent surgery on his back, was 11th at the halfway point before a nasty fall over a competitor’s toppled hurdle knocked him out of the competition.

Men’s 4x100m relay team

After upsetting the mighty United States on its own track to win the 2022 world title in Eugene, Oregon, Andre De Grasse, Aaron Brown, Jerome Blake and Brendon Rodney pulled off an even bigger stunner with their gold-medal victory at the Paris Olympics. Despite having the slowest qualifying time among the finalists, the Canadians’ precise teamwork propelled them to victory on the rain-drenched track at the Stade de France while the favoured Americans did themselves in (again!) with a botched exchange as superstar Noah Lyles sat out with an illness.

The U.S. is (rightly) favoured to win gold again after reclaiming the world title in 2023 in Budapest, where the decision to sit De Grasse for the qualifying round because his 200m final was coming up later that night probably cost Canada a spot in the final. With the seven-time Olympic medallist now on the wrong side of 30 and no one on the team ranked in the top 20 in the world in the individual 100m (Blake is 21st, De Grasse 52nd), the Canadians will once again have to be more than the sum of their parts.

Other Canadians to watch:

* 2023 women’s shot put silver medallist Sarah Mitton is a contender for gold after winning her second consecutive indoor world title in March and nearly capturing her second straight Diamond League Final championship last month. Mitton was awarded the trophy before a protest and subsequent video review showed that she’d stepped out of the throwing circle too early, bumping her down to third place.

* Former Olympic and world 5,000m medallist Moh Ahmed hopes to challenge for the podium in the two longest track races after his gutsy fourth-place performance in the 10,000m at the Paris Olympics. But the 34-year-old’s track days could be nearing an end as he’s begun to eye the typical late-career transition to road races.

* Evan Dunfee was not happy about the demise of the 50km race walk after taking bronze at the 2019 world championships and the 2021 Olympics. But he’s adapted well to the two shorter races that are now on the worlds program, placing fourth in both the 20km and 35km in 2023 before finishing fifth in the 20K at the Paris Olympics. This year, he broke the North American record in the 20 and the world record in the 35, making him a double medal threat in Tokyo.

* Twenty-two-year-old Savannah Sutherland is a rising star in the women’s 400 hurdles. After reaching the Olympic final last year in Paris (she finished seventh), Sutherland broke two-time Olympic gold medallist Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone’s U.S. collegiate record while winning the NCAA title for the second time in three years. Sutherland’s time of 52.46 is the third-fastest in the world this year, behind defending world champ Femke Bol of the Netherlands and McLaughlin-Levrone, who is skipping her signature event at the worlds in favour of the flat 400m.

Here’s the full list of Canadians slated to compete at the world championships. Here’s more on Canada’s medal contenders and rising stars from CBC Sports’ Justin Piercy.

How to watch:

Live streaming of the world championships begins this Friday at 7 p.m. ET on CBCSports.ca and CBC Gem and continues through Sept. 21. Here’s our streaming schedule and here’s the full schedule of events.