Final yr was one of the profitable years for Canadian athletes. Canada received a report 5 gold medals on the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest–the very best tally at a world championship so far–and 15 Canadian information have been damaged on the roads and the observe (indoor and out of doors).
The 2024 athletics schedule is a busy one, with World Indoors, World Cross and the Olympic Video games in the identical calendar yr. Will athletes come near the 15 nationwide information damaged final yr? Listed here are 5 information we expect will go down this yr.
Ladies’s 400mH
Sage Watson’s Canadian 400m hurdles report of 54.32 seconds will doubtless 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 characterize Canada for the primary time at a senior stage on the 2023 World Championships, the place she reached the semi-final within the girls’s 400mH.
At solely 20, Sutherland is one among Canada’s prime rising stars within the sport, and he or she is barely getting quicker.
Ladies’s 3,000m steeplechase
After watching Vancouver’s Ceili McCabe dominate the 2023 Canadian XC Championships, successful her first Canadian senior XC title, it was clear that she was blossoming into her potential. It would 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 the 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 ultimate 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 sizzling take, and I do know many will disagree. Andre De Grasse needs nothing greater than the Canadian 100m report (besides perhaps just a few 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 yr of his 20s, is that this the yr we lastly see him break by means of 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 20 years, and if De Grasse can add the distinguished 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 ultimate in 2021, and he concluded his 2023 season with his quickest efficiency since practically 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’d 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 as a consequence 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 yr, 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’re not 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.
Ladies’s marathon
There are a variety of marathons on the calendar this yr, and our Canadian women are solely getting quicker. Natasha Wodak’s report mark of two:23:12 has stood for the reason that Berlin Marathon in 2022, however the earlier report holder, Malindi Elmore, got here near it on the similar race in 2023, working 2:23:30.
Hearsay has it that a number of Canadian Olympians from 5,000m and 10,000m are transferring as much as the marathon distance in 2024. So Wodak’s mark will likely be challenged. A type 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 purpose is to earn Olympic qualification or 2:26:50—a mark solely two Canadian girls have ever surpassed.
With two girls’s spots nonetheless open on the Canadian Olympic crew in Paris, it is going to solely be a matter of time till we see a feminine Canadian marathoner throw down a breakthrough efficiency.
