With the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo simply 4 months away, Athletics Canada unveiled the primary wave of athletes set to signify Crew Canada in Japan. On Tuesday, eight athletes had been formally named to the world championship roster, led by Canadian marathon file holders Cam Levin 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 crew is Levins, who has discovered nice success in Japan, together with his North American marathon file of two:05:36 on the 2023 Tokyo Marathon, the place he completed fifth.
The lads’s marathon crew
Becoming a member of Levins on the lads’s crew is 2024 Canadian marathon champion Justin Kentand his coaching companion Ben value. 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, putting twenty eighth and thirtieth, respectively.
Athletics Canada had a tricky selection for the Canadian marathon crew in Tokyo, with six males inside the World Athletics choice quota after the Might 4 deadline. Calgary’s Rory Linkletter had the very best rating spot (fiftieth), however he turned down a crew spot to shift his focus to a possible fall marathon main. “It was a selection I made with my coach and agent,” says Linkletter. “4 years (in a row) of competing at world championships is lots, 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 also be slated to run the Ottawa Marathon on Might 25. Former Canadian marathon champion Thomas Broatch and a pair of:10 marathoner Tristan Woodfine had been the 2 different runners within the choice quota not chosen for the crew.
The ladies’s marathon crew
On the ladies’s aspect, the choice course of was extra simple, 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 Elmorewho locked in her spot with a 2:26:05 on the 2024 Valencia Marathon, and Leslie Sextonwho rounds out the ladies’s crew. 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 crew, race walker Evan Dunfee and 10,000m standout Moh Ahmed had been additionally named to the roster. Dunfee, the present world file holder within the males’s 35 km race stroll, might be trying to bounce again after narrowly lacking the rostrum in each the 20 km and 35 km occasions in Budapest. Earlier this yr, Dunfee set a world file (within the 35km distance) in Dudince, Slovakia.
Further crew members within the 10,000m and 35 km race stroll occasions should be added when Athletics Canada proclaims the rest of the Tokyo 2025 crew on Aug. 28.
