On Wednesday afternoon, Athletics Canada named the 26 athletes who will symbolize the nation on the 2025 World Athletics Relays in Guangzhou, China, subsequent month. To nobody’s shock, the Olympic champions (the boys’s 4x100m workforce that includes Aaron Brown, Jerome Blake, Brendon Rodney and Andre De Grasse) headline the checklist, however Athletics Canada is not going to be sending a full squad to China.
Canada’s relay groups will compete in 5 of the six occasions: the boys’s 4x100m, ladies’s 4x100m, combined 4x100m (new), ladies’s 4x400m and the combined 4x400m.
The one occasion absent from the checklist is within the males’s 4x400m occasion, which implies Canada will almost certainly not have a workforce on the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo in September. Regardless of the boys’s 4x400m sitting twenty seventh within the 32 allotted spots for World Relays, Athletics Canada has opted to not ship a males’s workforce.
Athletics Canada have determined to not ship a Males’s 4x400m to the World Relays in Guangzhou, China regardless of qualifying.
This may seemingly give Algeria the chance to ship a Males’s 4×4 workforce. pic.twitter.com/5YGD8t3T7C
— International Athletics Hub (@glblathletichub) April 16, 2025
A spokesperson for Athletics Canada instructed Canadian Working they “merely don’t have the personnel to area a aggressive workforce at the moment” within the males’s 4x400m relay.
Solely two of the highest 5 male 400m runners within the 2025 Athletics Canada rankings can be eligible to compete in China–Christopher Morales Williams and Austin Cole. The remainder are competing within the NCAA or are usually not match for choice. The 2025 World Athletics Relays run from Might 10-11, which is immediately within the busiest portion of the NCAA collegiate season.
The absences embrace College of Georgia sprinter and NCAA indoor 400m champion Will Floyd, who has run the quickest time by a Canadian on the planet this yr, clocking 45.24 seconds on the SEC Championships on March 1.
The final time a Canadian males’s 4x400m workforce certified for the World Championships was in 1991. The relay spots on the World Athletics Championships are decided from World Relay occasions, with the highest 16 nations (of 32, in every relay occasion) securing a spot in Tokyo this September.
The workforce of 26 racing subsequent month featured all 4 members of the 2024 Olympic Champion 4×100 metre relay workforce that received silver at this occasion a yr in the past, then shocked the world and captured Canadians’ consideration on the Paris Olympics, in addition to the ladies’s 4×400 metre workforce who received bronze ultimately yr’s World Relays to punch their very own ticket to Paris 2024.
“We’ve acquired a extremely good group. Quite a lot of the much less skilled athletes coming in definitely have a very good group round them to assist them progress and be taught from those which have carried out it time and time once more,” mentioned workforce head coach Glenroy Gilbert. “We will’t get forward of ourselves. Despite the fact that final yr we had an incredible displaying, we’re in search of the very same factor right here.”
To see the total Canadian workforce checklist for the 2025 World Athletics Relays in China, click on right here.