Canada’s Marco Arop takes 800 bronze at world athletics championships

TOKYO - Canada’s Marco Arop did not defend his men’s 800-metre title at the world athletics championships, but he did reach the podium with a third-place finish in Saturday’s race.

Arop took the bronze medal in a season-best time of one minute 41.95 seconds. The 27-year-old from Edmonton ran a strong race, but no one in the competitive field was catching Emmanuel Wanyonyi.

The Olympic champion from Kenya led start to finish to claim his first world title in a world-championship-record time of 1:41.86.

Algeria’s Djamel Sedjati, who Arop beat in a photo-finish in the semifinals, passed the Canadian down the stretch and took silver in 1:41.9.

Arop was looking to become the third Canadian to defend a world title in Tokyo after Canada’s superstar hammer throwers -- Camryn Rogers of Richmond, B.C., and Ethan Katzberg of Nanaimo, B.C. -- won their second straight gold medals.

Canada has four medals heading into Sunday’s final day of competition. Evan Dunfee of Richmond has the other, a gold in the 35-kilometre race walk.

Arop now has three world championship medals in the 800, one gold and two bronze. He also has an Olympic silver from Paris, where he led for most of the race before being caught by Wanyonyi at the finish line.

Meanwhile, it was an agonizing result for Sarah Mitton, who finished fourth in the women’s shot put after being in a medal position through the first five rounds.

Mitton, from Brooklyn, N.S., entered the sixth and final round in second place at 19.81 metres, with top throwers Chase Jackson of the United States and Jessica Schilder struggling and only the first throw of New Zealand’s Maddison-Lee Wesche beating the 20-metre mark.

But Schilder moved to the top of the table with a final throw of 20.29 metres, and Jackson followed at 20.21.

Mitton, the two-time reigning indoor world champion and silver medallist at the 2023 world championships in Budapest, had thrown for at least 20 metres seven times this season and needed to do it again, but her final attempt of 19.62 was short of Wesche’s bronze-medal standard of 20.06.

Canada will have a strong chance for a medal in the world championship’s final event. The men’s 4x100-metre sprint team of Jerome Blake of Kelowna, B.C., Aaron Brown and Brendon Rodney of Toronto and Andre De Grasse of Markham, Ont., finished first in their qualifying heat in a season-best time of 37.85 seconds in a race that included heavyweight teams from the U.S. and Jamaica.

The men’s 4x100 final goes Sunday evening in Tokyo. The well-drilled Canadians are a threat for gold after winning the 2024 Olympic title and the 2021 world title.

The U.S. and Germany finished second and third and advanced out of the heat automatically, while fourth-place France moved on with one of the two best times outside automatic qualification.

In a stunning development, Jamaica dropped the baton and did not advance.

The Canadian women’s 4x100 team also moved on to its final by finishing fourth in its heat. Audrey Leduc of Gatineau, Que., ran a strong anchor leg as Canada posted a national-record time of 42.38 seconds -- fifth-fastest overall and best of the teams outside automatic qualification.

Sade McCreath of Ajax, Ont., Ottawa’s Jacqueline Madogo and Montreal’s Marie-Eloise Leclair are the other team members.

Pierce LePage of Whitby, Ont., Canada’s fourth defending champion in Tokyo, ended his defence of the decathlon title before the halfway point of the competition when he pulled out of the 400 metres.

Canada was hoping to restore its potent one-two punch in the marquee event after LePage won gold and Damian Warner -- the 2021 Olympic champion -- took silver in Budapest.

Instead, Canada’s decathlon curse that started at the Paris Olympics continued. Warner, from London, Ont., withdrew before the decathlon-opening 100 metres with a nagging Achilles injury.

After sustained success, Canada’s decathlon woes started when LePage missed the Paris Games with a herniated disc. Warner was then eliminated from the Olympic competition when he failed on all three of his pole vault attempts. He was second in the overall standings entering the event.