With the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo simply 4 months away, Athletics Canada unveiled the primary wave of athletes set to characterize Group Canada in Japan. On Tuesday, eight athletes had been formally named to the world championship roster, led by Canadian marathon document holders Cam Levins and Natasha Wodak.
The marathon qualification window for Tokyo 2025 closed on Might 4, finalizing Canada’s full marathon squad of six. Headlining the lads’s staff is Levins, who has discovered nice success in Japan, together with his North American marathon document of two:05:36 on the 2023 Tokyo Marathon, the place he completed fifth.
The boys’s marathon staff
Becoming a member of Levins on the lads’s staff is 2024 Canadian marathon champion Justin Kent, and his coaching accomplice Ben Preisner. Kent and Preisner practice collectively in Vancouver underneath coach Richard Lee and beforehand represented Canada within the marathon on the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest, inserting twenty eighth and thirtieth, respectively.
Athletics Canada had a troublesome alternative for the Canadian marathon staff in Tokyo, with six males inside the World Athletics choice quota after the Might 4 deadline. Calgary’s Rory Linkletter had the best rating spot (fiftieth), however he turned down a staff spot to shift his focus to a possible fall marathon main. “It was a alternative I made with my coach and agent,” says Linkletter. “4 years (in a row) of competing at world championships is rather a lot, and it’s a decent turnaround from the spring I’ve had.”
Linkletter is coming off a sixth-place end on the 2025 Boston Marathon, the place he clocked the second-fastest marathon time in Canadian historical past (2:07:02). The 28-year-old can be slated to run the Ottawa Marathon on Might 25. Former Canadian marathon champion Thomas Broatch and a couple of:10 marathoner Tristan Woodfine had been the 2 different runners within the choice quota not chosen for the staff.
The ladies’s marathon staff
On the ladies’s aspect, the choice course of was extra easy, as solely three athletes had been inside quota. Wodak returns for her second consecutive World Championships, coming off a Fifteenth-place end in Budapest—the highest Canadian end result from the occasion.
She’ll be joined by Malindi Elmore, who locked in her spot with a 2:26:05 on the 2024 Valencia Marathon, and Leslie Sexton, who rounds out the ladies’s staff. Sexton, from Vancouver, hasn’t raced a marathon since ending seventh on the TCS Toronto Waterfront Marathon final fall, however she has had earlier success at worlds with a Thirteenth-place end on the 2022 World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Ore.
Past the marathon staff, race walker Evan Dunfee and 10,000m standout Moh Ahmed had been additionally named to the roster. Dunfee, the present world document holder within the males’s 35 km race stroll, might be seeking to bounce again after narrowly lacking the rostrum in each the 20 km and 35 km occasions in Budapest. Earlier this 12 months, Dunfee set a world document (within the 35km distance) in Dudince, Slovakia.
Extra staff members within the 10,000m and 35 km race stroll occasions should still be added when Athletics Canada publicizes the rest of the Tokyo 2025 staff on Aug. 28.