For first time, Canada to have 4 athletes defending titles at upcoming athletics worlds

Canada will send four defending champions to the World Athletics Championships for the first time in the competition's history.

Hammer throwers Ethan Katzberg and Camryn Rogers, 800-metre runner Marco Arop and decathlete Pierce LePage are part of the 59-athlete Canadian team named by Athletics Canada on Thursday for next month's championships in Tokyo.

Katzberg, from Nanaimo, B.C., and Rogers, from Richmond, B.C., are also the reigning Olympic champions in their events.

Edmonton's Arop won silver in the 800 at the 2024 Paris Games, while LePage, from Whitby, Ont., was unable to compete in Paris due to a herniated disc.

Canada's squad also includes the Olympic champion 4x100 sprint relay team of Andre De Grasse (Markham, Ont.), Toronto's Aaron Brown and Brendon Rodney, and Jerome Blake of Kelowna, B.C., along with 2021 Olympic champion decathlete and 2023 world silver medallist Damian Warner (London, Ont.), 2021 Olympic 5,000-metre silver medallist Moh Ahmed of St. Catharines, Ont., and 2023 world championships women's shot put runner-up Sarah Mitton of Brooklyn, N.S.

The world championships run Sept. 13-21.

"The athletes at the level where they're winning medals and trying to defend from the Worlds or the Olympics before — it's a tall order," Athletics Canada's Olympic head coach Glenroy Gilbert said in a statement. "But it's one that I think our athletes are more than prepared for and the more than capable of doing."

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