Final 12 months was one of the vital profitable years for Canadian athletes. Canada gained a report 5 gold medals on the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest–the best tally at a world championship so far–and 15 Canadian information have been damaged on the roads and the monitor (indoor and outside).
The 2024 athletics schedule is a busy one, with World Indoors, World Cross and the Olympic Video games in the identical calendar 12 months. Will athletes come near the 15 nationwide information damaged final 12 months? Listed here are 5 information we expect will go down this 12 months.
Girls’s 400mH
Sage Watson’s Canadian 400m hurdles report of 54.32 seconds will probably be damaged in 2024. The reigning NCAA 400mH champion, Savannah Sutherland, got here near breaking it in 2023, working a private better of 54.45 seconds on the 2023 NCAA Championships. Sutherland additionally acquired the chance to signify Canada for the primary time at a senior degree on the 2023 World Championships, the place she reached the semi-final within the ladies’s 400mH.
At solely 20, Sutherland is considered one of Canada’s high rising stars within the sport, and he or she is barely getting sooner.
Girls’s 3,000m steeplechase
After watching Vancouver’s Ceili McCabe dominate the 2023 Canadian XC Championships, profitable her first Canadian senior XC title, it was clear that she was blossoming into her potential. It is going to solely be a matter of time till she smashes the Canadian 3,000m steeplechase report of 9:22.40 held by Genevieve Lalonde. McCabe is at the moment ranked thirty fourth on this planet within the occasion and holds a private better of 9:25.98, solely three seconds off the report.
The 22-year-old already has some nationwide crew expertise, representing Canada at two world championships (Eugene 2022 and Budapest 2023). She simply missed out on the ladies’s 3,000m steeplechase last in Budapest, ending sixth within the heats, with solely the highest 5 advancing. It’s solely logical that she is going to make that leap this season.
Males’s 100m
That is an especially scorching take, and I do know many will disagree. Andre De Grasse desires nothing greater than the Canadian 100m report (besides perhaps a number of extra gold medals). He has run beneath 9.84 on a number of events, however all of the performances have been wind-aided. With De Grasse within the final 12 months of his 20s, is that this the 12 months we lastly see him break by and shatter Donovan Bailey and Bruny Surin’s Canadian report of 9.84 seconds?
Bailey and Surin’s mark has now stood for greater than twenty years, and if De Grasse can add the celebrated title of Canada’s quickest man to his resume, he would solidify himself as Canada’s biggest sprinter. Though De Grasse’s quickest authorized mark is 9.89 seconds from the Tokyo Olympic 100m last in 2021, and he concluded his 2023 season with his quickest efficiency since almost the final Olympics. If there’s a time for De Grasse to problem the report in his profession, it’s now.
Males’s half-marathon
There was a lot hypothesis whether or not we might see Cam Levins’s Canadian half-marathon mark of 60:18 damaged ultimately weekend’s Houston Half Marathon, however with the pre-race dropout of Moh Ahmed because of damage, who was anticipated to make his half-marathon debut, mixed with the chilly and windy circumstances in Houston, Levins’s report survived one other day.
With how briskly the world’s greatest distance athletes are at the moment working, this report will likely be damaged this 12 months, and it’s only a matter of when. When Levins initially set the report on the Vancouver First Half, it was a really moist and windy day in the midst of February. Though Levins was completely in report health, if he ran that race once more on the identical day, he would have damaged one hour (solo). We aren’t saying that 60 minutes and 18 seconds isn’t quick, however with the unbelievable depth in Canadian males’s distance working proper now, it’s solely a matter of time till Ahmed, Ben Flanagan, Rory Linkletter, and even Levins himself lowers it even additional.
Girls’s marathon
There are loads of marathons on the calendar this 12 months, and our Canadian girls are solely getting sooner. Natasha Wodak’s report mark of two:23:12 has stood because the Berlin Marathon in 2022, however the earlier report holder, Malindi Elmore, got here near it on the identical race in 2023, working 2:23:30.
Hearsay has it that a number of Canadian Olympians from 5,000m and 10,000m are shifting as much as the marathon distance in 2024. So Wodak’s mark will likely be challenged. A kind of athletes is 10,000m Olympic finalist Andrea Seccafien, who at the moment holds the Canadian half-marathon report of 69:38. Seccafien is scheduled to make her debut on the 2024 Tokyo Marathon on March 3, and says her aim is to earn Olympic qualification or 2:26:50—a mark solely two Canadian ladies have ever surpassed.
With two ladies’s spots nonetheless open on the Canadian Olympic crew in Paris, it’ll solely be a matter of time till we see a feminine Canadian marathoner throw down a breakthrough efficiency.
