Timing couldn't be better for Canadian track and field world champions
Lucrative sponsorship deals could be in offing a year out from Paris
In world class professional track and field, timing is just as important as time.
Measured by time alone, Oblique Seville was the second-fastest men's 100-metre runner in last week's World Athletics Championship, clocking 9.86 seconds to equal his personal best and win his semifinal. If he had matched that performance in the final, he would have left Budapest with a silver medal and the $35,000 US payday World Athletics bestowed on second-place finishers.
But in the final Seville ran 9.88, a tick slower on the stopwatch but in a different area code in terms of significance. Instead of a silver medal, he has a fourth-place finish, and a spot in the long line of people prepping "I used this loss as fuel" soundbytes, hoping to deliver them after they win a medal at the Olympics next summer.
The idea that the right timing can make the same result more rewarding also works in the big picture. So, the second-best time to win your first global gold medal, like four Canadians did in Budapest, and introduce yourself to mainstream sports fans is anytime. If you enter the competition, you might as well try to win. Ethan Katzberg, Camryn Rogers, Marco Arop and Pierce Lepage didn't just try. They achieved.
And the best time for a gold-medal coming-out party?
The summer before an Olympic Games, when fans and sponsors are trying to figure out where to invest their intention and money for the 11 months leading up to the most-watched sports event on the planet. In a sport where apparel deals and sponsorship dollars matter at least as much as prize money does, that type of attention isn't just flattery — it's currency. So if we see this year's medallists on billboards or TV commercials or cereal boxes in the run-up to Paris, we'll know they capitalized on their golden moment.
Overall, Canadian athletes won six medals in Budapest, good for sixth in the total medal count. But the four gold medals represent Canada's highest total ever. Only the United States, with 12 gold medals, can claim more world champions this year.
If you're a fan of Canadian track and field, it's almost impossible to imagine a better scenario for the sport in this country. Every Canadian medallist possesses either upside or staying power, and so every Canadian track fan has a real reason to feel optimistic heading toward the Paris Olympics.
Here, of course, unfortunately, I have to remind everyone that next year's results are far from guaranteed. If you need reminders of how quickly the landscape can change among top-tier elites, look at the men's 100 metres.
Last year in Eugene, Ore., we saw a U.S. sweep — Fred Kerley for gold, followed by Marvin Bracy-Williams and Trayvon Bromell. This year, Bracy-Williams and Bromell, both slowed by injuries, missed qualifying for worlds. Kerley had a bye into the men's 100 metre field in Budapest, but was eliminated in the semifinals. At this level, the margins are paper thin. If you lose a half-step somewhere, your opponents won't slow down for you, and the stopwatch doesn't care about your résumé.
So we should also resist the temptation to think Canada's team as a whole, and its medallists in particular, head into next year with momentum.
Can they continue building on the foundations that carried them this far? Absolutely, especially if they finish the summer healthy and head into the off-season injury-free.
And can they strengthen the chemistry and continuity they have built with coaches and teammates? Of course. Support teams, like athletes, are always seeking to improve from season to season.
But meet promoters aren't going to give Arop a running start in his next 800m just because he won gold in 2023. Everybody, in every race, regardless of how many medals they have won in the past, starts from a dead stop and runs the same distance. That's what makes repeating as champion so difficult, and so special.
If momentum doesn't quite apply here, Canada's quartet of new champions can capitalize on the next best thing.
Youth.
Katzberg, 21, is the youngest among them. The oldest is LePage, who, at 27, is a relative dinosaur. We have a highly scientific term for this stage in their careers: The Sweet Spot. Mature enough to win at the world level, but young enough to keep improving. If Arop and Rogers had made these breakthroughs at age 36, I would put a lot of "caution" in my cautious optimism about what they might accomplish in Paris next summer. But it's possible that neither has reached their peak.
A national record for Arop? More national marks for Rogers and Katzberg?
Not exactly bold predictions, which is encouraging news for people invested in Canadian track and field success in Paris.
Same with the diversity of events that yielded medals. Two golds in hammer throw alone, one each in the 800m and the decathlon, along with Damian Warner's decathlon silver and Sara Mitton's silver in the shot put. That type of medal distribution is the best-case scenario for Canada which, like the U.S., tries to cultivate medal contenders in as many disciplines as possible, but, unlike the U.S., can't force its way to the top of the medal through sheer numbers.
Those two countries exist at the opposite end of the spectrum from countries like Jamaica, whose 12 medals all came from sprints and jumps, or Kenya, which won 10 medals, all in distance running events. A Kenyan runner named Abraham Kibiwot took bronze in the steeplechase, and the result made big news back home – because he didn't win gold. No Kenyan has won a global steeplechase title since 2019, and that development qualifies as a crisis in a country that, justifiably, has felt ownership over the event.
It's also the type of hand-wringing that ensues when your national team's goal is to dominate one category of events. A if few distance runners have a down year, and a few more stars age out of contention, you can't depend on throwers or sprinters or jumpers to keep you near the top of the medal table.
But what Canada lacks in depth in any one category, it compensates for in range. No medals from male sprinters this year? No problem. The hammer throwers picked up the slack. Relay team loses in the semis? They can regroup and make another run at it next year. In the meantime, here's Arop, with a hard-earned gold medal on the track.
Individual brilliance and solid team effort, with room to improve on both fronts between now and Paris. If you're a fan of Canadian track and field, you've got to love this timing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
