CANADIANS TO WATCH AT THE TRACK AND FIELD WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS IN LONDON
SHAWN BARBER
No pun intended, the Canadian pole vault champ’s performance has been decidedly up and down for about a calendar year.
He came into the Rio Olympics last August as the reigning world champ, then promptly missed the final by finishing 10th in qualifying.
Two months later it was announced he tested positive for cocaine during the Canadian championships in Edmonton in July and learned only three days before the Olympics that he would be allowed to compete in Rio. An arbiter ruled Barber accidentally ingested the substance by kissing a woman he met through posting an ad on Craigslist seeking a “casual encounter,” which occurred in his Edmonton hotel room the night before he competed.
Then, in an April 24 tweet, Barber announced his sexual orientation: “Gay and proud.”
He comes into London with a seasonbest of 5.72 metres, good for 16th on the IAAF top list.
MELISSA BISHOP
Bishop’s race, the 800 metres, is dominated by three women — South African Caster Semenya, Francine Niyonsaba of Burundi and Margaret Wambui of Kenya — and one issue, hyperandrogenism.
It’s believed all three women naturally produce higher-than-normal levels of testosterone. The IAAF claimed these intersex women had an unfair advantage on the track and instituted what it called hyperandrogenism regulations, which forced Semenya and presumably others to take hormone-suppressing medication. In 2014, the rules were struck down as discriminatory by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Semenya ran away with the gold medal in Rio, followed by Niyonsaba and Wambui. Bishop lowered her own national record to 1:57.02 in the Olympic final, and finished fourth. This year, Bishop’s season best of 1:57.01, set in Monaco last month, is the fifth fastest time in the world. The 28-year-old from Eganville, Ont. won her fourth Canadian title in July in a rather pedestrian 2:00.26.
DEREK DROUIN
The Canadian record-holder in the high jump, at 2.40 metres, has been bothered by a nagging Achilles tendon injury and pulled out of the national championships in early July. In his only outdoor competition of 2017 he cleared 2.28 metres, but it was part of a decathlon in California. He is a former multi-eventer who returned to decathlon training this year, with an eye on competing at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
For now, however, the 27-year-old from Sarnia comes to London as a high-jumper, not to mention as the reigning Olympic, world and Pan American Games champion.
EVAN DUNFEE
He finished 133rd in the Vancouver Marathon this spring, which sounds terrible until you realize he racewalked the 42.2-kilometre course and beat all but 132 runners.
The 26-year-old from Vancouver comes to London as a favourite in the 50-kilometre race walk, after posting the fifth-fastest time in the world this year while winning in Monterrey. He crossed the line in 3:46:03.
He is most famous, at least recently, for his act of sportsmanship at the Rio Olympics. He crossed the line in fourth spot in a Canadian record time of 3:41:38. He had been bumped along the route by Japan’s Hirooki Arai, who was subsequently disqualified, handing the bronze medal to Dunfee. Arai appealed and won. Dunfee chose not to launch his own appeal, and was lauded for his decision.
MO AHMED
Ahmed crushed the indoor Canadian record at 5,000 metres earlier this year, blazing to a new mark of 13:04.60 in Boston. He obliterated the 13:19.16 set by Cam Levins on the same track in 2014.
Ahmed was fourth at the Rio Olympics over the same distance, after a successful appeal of his disqualification for stepping on the inside line of the track. So he comes to London as a serious medal hope. He appears on form, having clocked 13:08.16 outdoors in Eugene, Ore. in May, good for the 10th-fastest time in the world this season. The 26-year-old Somalianborn runner, who lives in St. Catharines, Ont., also has the 10th-fastest time in the 10,000 metres this year at 27:30. He crossed the line in Palo Alto, Calif., just 0.19 seconds behind Australian Patrick Tiernan.
DAMIAN WARNER
The 27-year-old decathlete made headlines in late 2016 when he left his longtime London-based team of four coaches to work with Les Gramantik in Calgary; and again, five months later, when he won the HypoMeeting at Gotzis, Austria for a third time, just the third man to do so in the history of the meet. The coaching switch had been seen as a bit of a gamble, given that Warner had won Commonwealth Games gold in 2014, Pan Am Games gold, world championship silver in 2015, and Olympic bronze last summer. But he wasn’t satisfied with the bronze in Rio, and felt the obvious weaknesses with a couple of his 10 events — pole vault and discus — could use a fresh approach. Gramantik previously worked with decathlete Michael Smith and heptathlete Jessica Zelinka.
At Gotzis, which will be Warner’s only international event before the worlds, he earned 8,591 points, just 104 points off the Canadian record he set at the 2015 worlds in Beijing.
He won the 100 metres, long jump and 110-metre hurdles, was second in the 400 metres and tied for fifth in high jump. He was also seventh in the 1,500 metres, eighth in discus, 14th in javelin, 16th in pole vault and 18th in shot put, leaving room for improvement.