This is an excerpt from The Buzzer, which is CBC Sports' daily email newsletter. Stay up to speed on what's happening in sports by subscribing here. Heading into this year's World Athletics Championships at historic Hayward Field in Oregon, Canada's medal hopes seemed to rest on a set of familiar faces.
Andre De Grasse, Damian Warner, Moh Ahmed and Evan Dunfee had accounted for all five of Canada's podium appearances at the last worlds, in 2019, and were the country's only individual track and field medallists at last summer's Tokyo Olympics.
Instead, for a variety of reasons, none of those four men made an individual podium in Oregon. And yet, Canada still finished the meet last night with a solid four medals, thanks to these pleasant surprises: The men's 4x100m relay team's shocking gold To borrow from the late, great Don Wittman, Canadian sprinters just love Saturday nights in the United States.
Twenty-six years after Donovan Bailey won Olympic 100m and 4x100m gold on back-to-back weekends in Georgia, De Grasse anchored Canada to a stunning upset in the men's relay final in Oregon.