Fifty-nine track and field athletes, the most Canada has sent to a World Athletics Championships, will try to top the six medals the 2023 team earned in Budapest, Hungary.
Competition runs through Sunday in Tokyo. Watch all the action on CBCSports.ca and CBC Gem, and click here for the full broadcast details.
Canada has sent four defending champions for the first time in world championship history: Hammer throwers Ethan Katzberg and Camryn Rogers, 800-metre runner Marco Arop and decathlete Pierce LePage. Rogers successfuly defended her title on Monday.
Athletics Canada also named four athletes in an individual event, also a first, in the men’s 800.
Visit here each day for details on the notable events featuring Canadian athletes, including the time of their competition and brief summary of their season.
Men’s 800-metre heats — 6:44 a.m. ET
Edmonton’s Marco Arop will defend his world championship title. Hampered by a right Achilles tendon issue since early July, the 26-year-old told CBC Sports he arrived for Athletics Canada’s pre-worlds camp in Gifu, Japan close to full health.
At the Aug. 28 Diamond League Final, he nearly beat winner Emmanuel Wanyonyi, finishing 20-100ths of a second behind his Kenyan rival in third. The world No. 2-ranked Arop is a four-time defending Canadian champion.
WATCH | Arop falls short of elusive Diamond League Trophy in 800m:
Edmonton’s Marco Arop finishes 3rd in 800m Diamond League Final
In the second of seven heats on Tuesday, he will face No. 5 Mohamed Attaoui and seven others. The top three advance to Thursday’s semifinals.
Three other Canadians automatically qualified for worlds by running under the men’s 1:44.50 entry standard: Abdullahi Hassan (1:44.25), Justin O’Toole (1:44.42) and Matthew Erickson (1:44.49).
WATCH | Arop discusses navigating 3 rounds of competition at a major championship:
Marco Arop talks about his approach to racing in the heats, semifinals and final at a global championship
Men’s hammer throw final — 8:01 a.m. ET
Ethan Katzberg will try to follow the lead of Canadian teammate Camryn Rogers, who repeated as world champion on Monday.
Katzberg qualified first for the men’s final with a throw of 81.85 metres on his first and only attempt during Sunday’s qualification round.
The 23-year-old from Nanaimo, B.C., is the top-ranked men’s hammer thrower in the world. He arrived in Tokyo with a trio of second-place finishes over four events after five straight victories to open the season.
He threw a season-best 82.73 metres on May 31 and has thrown 80-low or 81-high since, so perhaps he simply didn’t want to peak before worlds. Katzberg’s personal best and Canadian record is 84.38.
In the 2023 world final, he threw a then-national record of 81.25, defeating Wojciech Nowicki of Poland by 23 centimetres in Budapest, Hungary.
WATCH | Katzberg wins 2023 world gold in Canadian record performance:
Ethan Katzberg grabs gold and sets Canadian hammer throw record at worlds
Women’s 1,500 final — 9:05 a.m. ET
Toronto native Gabriela DeBues-Stafford will race a world championship final for the first time since Oct. 5, 2019 in Doha, Qatar, where she placed sixth in 3:56.12 that remains a Canadian record.
She qualified for the final in Tokyo by reaching the finish fifth in her semifinal heat (top six advanced) with a time of four minutes 8.29 seconds with the temperature hovering around 35 C. DeBues-Stafford said she was tripped about 200 metres from the finish but made up ground on the outside over the final 100.
WATCH | DeBues-Stafford runs 3:36.12 personal best at 2019 worlds:
Gabriela DeBues-Stafford sets national record in 1,500 metres, finishes 6th
After two years battling injuries, the 30-year-old returned to competition this season with a goal to race the 1,500 and 5,000 for the first time at a major championship.
“It’s been a really, really hard last three years. To go from 4:15 [last year] to whatever shape I’m in right now, [it’s] great to be a world finalist. I’m so happy,” DeBues-Stafford told Devin Heroux of CBC Sports.
DeBues-Stafford ran a season-best 4:01.19 on July 11 to qualify in the 1,500 and first met the automatic entry standard in the 5,000 for worlds, running 14:47.83 in her first race in the distance this season on June 7 in France. She will begin her quest for a medal in the 5,000 in Thursday’s heats.
