Audrey Leduc's new 100m record will likely only stand for as long as she takes to break it

If we really want to nit-pick Audrey Leduc's national record-setting last Saturday, I guess we can start with her start.

Video shows a handful of other runners in the women's 100-metre final at the LSU Alumni Gold track meet opening a gap on Leduc in the opening phases of the race, with American Aleia Hobbs, the eventual winner, rocketing away from all of them. Hobbs finished in 10.88 seconds, the second-fastest time in the world so far this year, in front of a fast-closing Leduc, who had shifted gears mid-race to overtake several faster starters. Leduc's final result – 10.96 seconds – set a new personal best, and broke a national record that had stood since 1987.

So, yes, if we want to, we can calculate how much faster we think Leduc could have run with a better start, but my scalpel isn't sharp enough to split that hair. I'd rather focus on her sizzling top-end speed, and how she separated herself from the pack to finish within sniffing distance of Hobbs, a world championship finalist in 2022.

Often, you can gauge the effectiveness of a sprinter's start by looking at how they finish. Leduc achieved a personal best and the Olympic standard while shaving .02 off Angela Bailey's 36-year-old national record. The best start is the one that fits your race model, gets you to your top speed at the right time, and allows you to maintain it as long as possible. By those markers, Leduc, a 25-year-old from Gatineau, Quebec, aced every test last Saturday.

As for the Canadian record, you can track it on a stopwatch — Leduc is one of only two Canadian women in history with a legal sub-11 second clocking — or measure it by the calendar. Bailey set her record in the summer of 1987, back when Brian Mulroney was prime minister, Argos