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We’re one day away from the start of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland, where athletes from 74 countries and territories associated with the old British Empire will compete in 10 different sports.
Similar to the Summer Olympics, the two sports that will draw the most attention are swimming and track and field. With that in mind, we looked at the Canadian swimmers to watch in yesterday’s newsletter, and today we’re doing the same for track and field, which looks like it’ll be Canada’s No. 1 sport in these Games.
Why? Well, unlike swimming, where superstar Summer McIntosh opted to skip the Commonwealths in favour of the high-status Pan Pacific championships, the Commonwealth Games are the marquee event of the summer for Canada’s track and field athletes. All three of the Canadian athletes/teams who won gold at the 2024 Olympics will be competing in Glasgow, along with several other Olympic and world-championship medallists.
Here’s who to watch.
De Grasse and friends go for relay gold
It’s been almost two years, and I still can’t stop watching Canada’s stunning victory in the men’s 4x100m relay final at the 2024 Olympics in Paris. With apologies to the Canadian women’s soccer team’s surprise gold, it was the highlight of those Games for me and a top-three moment in Canadian track history (along with this and this).
The men who authored that incredible win — Aaron Brown, Jerome Blake, Brendon Rodney and the great Andre De Grasse — will try to add their first Commonwealth Games relay medal in Glasgow. It’s one of the few things left to accomplish for this quartet, which also boasts an Olympic silver medal in 2021, a world-championship gold in 2022 (when they shocked the United States on its home track in Oregon) and a silver at last year’s worlds in Tokyo, where the Americans struck back for the win.
This past May, the Canadians’ hopes of winning their third straight World Relays medal were dashed when Blake pulled up with a hamstring injury during the second leg of the final. But the team still qualified for next year’s world championships by winning its first-round heat with the fastest overall time.
Three of the four Canadian men will also compete individually. The exception is the 31-year-old De Grasse, who returns to the Commonwealth Games for the first time since 2014, when they were also held in Glasgow. Still in college at the time, the future Olympic 200m champion could not advance past the semifinals in that event. In the 4x100m final, the De Grasse-anchored Canadian team was disqualified when he and third-legger Dontae Richards-Kwok were unable to complete their exchange within the designated area. Usain Bolt’s Jamaica won gold and set a Commonwealth Games record that still stands.
Brown, who was also part of the 4×100 team in 2014 and took silver in the 200m in 2018, will run the 200 next week along with Rodney. Blake is the top Canadian in the 100m.
The gods of the hammer return
Reigning Olympic and world hammer throw champions Camryn Rogers and Ethan Katzberg are looking to add another gold medal to their extensive trophy cases.
Rogers, who has sandwiched back-to-back world titles around her 2024 Olympic victory, goes for a second consecutive Commonwealth gold after blowing away her competition by almost 4½ metres in 2022. Katzberg wants to upgrade his silver from the 2022 Games, which also paved the way to two straight world titles and an Olympic gold for him.
Get to know the reigning Olympic champion and two-time world champion hammer thrower Camryn Rogers, as she will be competing for Canada at the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games.
Katzberg, 24, is unbeaten in four starts this year, while Rogers has won eight of her 10 competitions. Last month, the 27-year-old suffered her first loss in more than a year when she finished fourth at a smaller meet in Los Angeles. She then placed second to Chinese teenager Zhang Jiale at the Diamond League’s Prefontaine Classic in Oregon before heading into the Commonwealths with a couple of tuneup wins in Ireland.
2022 Commonwealths bronze medallist Jillian Weir is also competing in the women’s hammer throw, while Katzberg lookalike Rowan Hamilton is a medal contender in the men’s event.
Other Canadians to watch
2021 Olympic decathlon champion Damian Warner returns to the city where he won Commonwealth gold a dozen years ago. He took silver at the 2023 world championships for his fourth career medal there before an Achilles injury caused him to miss last year’s worlds. Warner is getting up there in age at 36, but he remains a podium contender.
Other top Canadian men competing in Glasgow include 2021 Olympic 5,000m silver medallist Moh Ahmed, reigning race walk world champion Evan Dunfee and rising young 400m star Christopher Morales Williams. After bursting on the scene in 2024 by winning gold at the NCAA championships, clocking the fastest indoor time in history (it didn’t count as a world record because the starting blocks were not up to code) and making his Olympic debut, the 21-year-old scored the biggest victory of his career this past March, winning the indoor world title in a championship-record time of 44.76 seconds.
Olympic men’s 800m silver medallist and former world champion Marco Arop is not competing, making him the only active Canadian star to take a pass on the Commonwealths.
On the women’s side, Canada features defending Commonwealth Games shot put champion Sarah Mitton, who took silver at the 2023 world championships before capturing back-to-back indoor world titles. She’s joined by fellow national-record holders Savannah Sutherland (400m hurdles), Audrey Leduc (200m) and Sade McCreath, who broke Leduc’s 100m record a couple weeks ago in Edmonton. Leduc is running both the 100 and 200 and will team with McCreath in the 4x100m relay.
A dozen Canadians will compete in Para events, which are held concurrently with the able-bodied competitions. They include sprinter Zachary Gingras, who earned bronze in the men’s 400m T38 category at the 2021 Paralympics and silver in that event at the 2023 world championships. He also took bronze at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in the 100m, which is the event he’s running this time.
Canadian medal projections
Our friends at Shoreview Sports Analytics applied their statistical model to the Commonwealth Games, and it predicts Canada will win 13 medals. That includes golds by Rogers, Katzberg, Mitton and Warner, and a silver by the men’s 4x100m relay team.
De Grasse and company are projected to finish just behind Nigeria, led by NCAA 100m champion Kanyinsola Ajayi. The 21-year-old beat reigning world champ Oblique Seville of Jamaica twice in a row at Diamond League meets this month — both in 9.84 seconds, which trails only Seville’s 9.82 for the fastest time in the world this year.
Here are all of Canada’s projected medallists, along with their probabilities of winning gold or a medal of any colour in their event.
How to watch
Track and field competition at the Commonwealth Games opens on Monday and runs through Saturday, Aug. 1 — the day before the closing ceremony. The morning sessions begin at 5 a.m. ET and the evening sessions, featuring most of the finals, start at 1:30 p.m. ET.
Live coverage of the Games begins Thursday with preliminary matches in lawn bowls at 4:30 a.m. ET on CBC Gem and the opening ceremony at 2:30 p.m. ET on Gem and the CBC TV network. Friday is the first full day of competition and will feature swimming.
Here’s more on how to watch the Commonwealth Games on CBC’s streaming and television platforms, and here’s a look at the broadcast team and coverage details.
For the latest news, results and video and full streaming and broadcast schedules, visit CBC Sports’ Commonwealth Games website.
