The Canadian women’s sprint team hadn’t even qualified for an Olympics in the 4×100-metre relay since Rio in 2016 and were not highly touted in 2024.
The men’s 4×100-metre relay team members, meanwhile, had a rocky start to the Paris Olympics, with Andre De Grasse – a six-time Olympic medalist and the defending gold medal winner in the 200 – failing to reach the finals in both individual sprint events.
De Grasse, who trains at Pickering’s Speed Academy track club, also saw his personal coach booted from the games and veteran Aaron Brown also false-started in the 100 and did not make it out of the heats in the 200.
On top of all that, De Grasse is nursing a hamstring injury that he insisted wouldn’t affect his performance on the straight anchor leg in the relay.
But both teams will be going for gold in Paris Friday.
Led by a blazing anchor leg by Audrey Leduc – who just missed the 100-metre individual final by 3/100ths of a second, the Canadian women clocked a national record time of 42.50 to reach Friday’s final.
Other members of the team include Sade McCreath of Ajax – the 2023 Canadian Indoor champion in the 60-metres – Jacqueline Madogo and Marie-Eloise Leclair.
This is McCreath’s debut at the Olympic games.
The women will race at 1:30 p.m.
The men’s team, which includes Jerome Blake and Brendan Rodney in addition to De Grasse and Brown, squeezed into the final (despite a poor final exchange between Rodney and De Grasse) after a gutsy anchor leg from De Grasse.
The men race for gold at 1:45 p.m.
