We’re two days away from the beginning of the 2024 World Athletics Relays Championships from Nassau, Bahamas, on Could 4-5. Athletics Canada has despatched a loaded workforce of 27 athletes, comprised of world champions, Olympic champions and one of the best up-and-coming expertise who will showcase their expertise and compete for spots on the Paris Olympic Video games.
Canada has 5 relay groups to compete throughout the 5 race disciplines, starting from the boys’s and ladies’s 4x100m relay to the 4x400m and blended 4x400m relays. Stakes are excessive, with the 2024 World Relays serving as a direct qualifying occasion for the Paris Olympics. The highest 14 groups in every self-discipline will qualify based mostly on their instances. Every occasion may have heats and a closing, and the highest two groups from every warmth will advance.
Listed here are a couple of Canadian storylines to observe.
1. Will the Canadian males’s 4x100m workforce bounce again?
In 2022, the Canadian quartet of Aaron Brown, Andre De Grasse, Brendon Rodney and Jerome Blake had been on prime of the world, successful Canada’s first world championship gold medal within the males’s dash relay since 1997. Watching De Grasse snatch the baton from Rodney on the anchor leg, surging previous American sprinter Marvin Bracy within the closing 50 metres was a second many Canadian observe and area followers will always remember.
Simply 12 months later in Budapest, the quartet faltered of their protection of the title, failing to advance past the heats on the 2023 World Championships and watching the People win gold from the stands. The Canadian workforce not being within the closing was one of many largest tales of the championships, particularly when relay head coach Glenroy Gilbert rested De Grasse within the heats so he might deal with the boys’s 200m closing, scheduled the identical evening. Brown, Rodney and Blake walked off the observe in disbelief, making an attempt to know what occurred, however all fingers pointed to what would’ve occurred had De Grasse run.
In sports activities, it isn’t straightforward to win, however defending your title may be much more daunting. Shedding groups get hungrier, whereas the champions get a style of success. The Canadian males’s 4x100m workforce skilled the excessive of successful and the low of defeat. What separates a terrific workforce from an excellent workforce is their capacity to deal with adversity and rise again to the highest. Budapest was a setback, however the upcoming World Relays in Paris might function the workforce’s platform to reaffirm their dominance as one of many prime dash nations on the earth.
2. What to anticipate from Christopher Morales Williams’s relay debut
One of the vital promising abilities in Canadian observe and area, Christopher Morales Williams, is ready to make his debut on the senior stage with the Canadian males’s 4x400m workforce at World Relays. Morales Williams presently holds the seventh-fastest 400m time globally this season, with a mark of 44.49 seconds (a world indoor greatest).
Because the reigning NCAA 400m champion indoors, Morales Williams has kicked off the outside season with a bang, clocking 44.91 on the Florida Relays on April 13, marking his first sub-45 efficiency (outdoor). At simply 19, Morales Williams is poised to anchor the Canadian workforce, pitting him towards the world’s prime 400m runners on the ultimate leg. Whatever the Canadian males’s 4x400m workforce’s efficiency, the invaluable championship-level publicity will assist and take a look at Morales Williams as he gears up for the final word problem in Paris.
As he’s nonetheless younger, there needs to be no set expectations of him at World Relays. Let’s see what the younger star can do. He’ll lead a formidable younger Canadian squad that includes Myles Misener-Daley, Marco Arop, Will Floyd and Ibrahim Ayorinde, aiming to safe an Olympic berth for the boys’s 4x400m.
3. Can Canada qualify a males’s 4x400m workforce for the primary time in 32 years?
For those who’re studying this and you’re below 30, first, thanks–and second, you may be shocked to listen to in regards to the Canadian males’s 4x400m workforce. Sure, Canada does have one, however they’ve been absent from the Olympic Video games for the final three many years. The quartet of Mark Jackson, Anthony Wilson, Fred Williams and the late Mark Graham (who would all now be over 50), had been the final athletes to symbolize Canada within the males’s 4x400m on the 1992 Olympic Video games in Barcelona.
For those who assume 32 years is a protracted drought, don’t ask in regards to the Canadian males’s 4x400m report, set on the Montreal Olympics in 1976 (lengthy earlier than the times of tremendous spikes). You get the gist—it’s been some time since Canada has had an excellent males’s 4x400m workforce, however there’s a brand new era of sprinters right here to alter that, beginning with 19-year-old phenom Morales Williams.
The world is aware of Arop for the 800m occasion and his capacity to make use of his physique and energy to surge to the entrance of the sphere, however he doesn’t have a lot expertise within the 4x400m. A 400m private better of 46.10 seconds is sweet for an 800m runner, however a tad gradual for the relay. For the Canadian workforce to get essentially the most out of Arop, he would want to take the baton on the second leg (the leg the place runners are allowed to chop in for his or her assigned lanes), utilizing his physique to energy Canada to the entrance and maintain the place.
Like Morales Williams, Misener-Daley and Ayorinde are additionally younger and don’t have senior nationwide workforce expertise. Ayorinde represented Canada on the 2024 World Indoors Championships within the 400m, however didn’t get out of the heats. Misener-Daley had an illustrious highschool profession, turning into the primary Canadian 400m sprinter to run sub-46 (45.78) in 2019, however then he went a couple of years in school with out beating his youthful mark. He had a breakthrough season in 2023, decreasing his greatest to 45.25 and going sub-46 in eight of his 10 400m races. If Misener-Daley and Ayorinde may be constant at World Relays, Canada would possibly lastly have a 4x400m workforce in Paris.
4. What’s the potential of the ladies’s 4x400m workforce?
Fourth on the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, fourth on the 2023 World Championships in Budapest, and fourth on the 2022 World Championships in Eugene, Ore.—this workforce has been by it. They’re good, however not adequate, and that’s been their narrative over the past three main championships. Regardless of adjustments in athletes (and order), the outcomes have remained the identical, with the workforce battling competition heading into the ultimate leg however lacking the rostrum.
The depth of the ladies’s 4x400m workforce is nice, and outdoors of the American and Dutch powerhouses, Canada might genuinely contend for bronze right here, or in Paris. Nonetheless, like many relay groups, they face the problem of discovering chemistry and the correct order. Kyra Constantine has been current on all three championship groups and has run the anchor leg. Whereas Constantine is presently the highest feminine 400m runner nationally, she has struggled with consistency over the previous couple of seasons. The excellent news is that she has proven robust indicators of enchancment to start out her 2024 season, successful two of her three races and operating her quickest instances in practically three years. It is a optimistic signal for the Canadian ladies’s 4x400m workforce, as they goal for his or her third consecutive Olympic berth.
Tips on how to watch
You possibly can stream the 2024 World Athletics Relays stay from Nassau, Bahamas, on CBCSports.ca, the CBC Sports activities App, or CBC Gem. Protection will start on Saturday, Could 4 at 7 p.m. ET with the blended 4x400m relay Olympic qualifying spherical. The primary qualifying rounds for all 5 occasions will run on Could 4, with the finals scheduled for the night of Could 5.
