Timing couldn't be better for Canadian track and field world champions

In world class professional track and field, timing is just as important as time.

Measured by time alone, Oblique Seville was the second-fastest men's 100-metre runner in last week's World Athletics Championship, clocking 9.86 seconds to equal his personal best and win his semifinal. If he had matched that performance in the final, he would have left Budapest with a silver medal and the $35,000 US payday World Athletics bestowed on second-place finishers.

But in the final Seville ran 9.88, a tick slower on the stopwatch but in a different area code in terms of significance. Instead of a silver medal, he has a fourth-place finish, and a spot in the long line of people prepping "I used this loss as fuel" soundbytes, hoping to deliver them after they win a medal at the Olympics next summer.

The idea that the right timing can make the same result more rewarding also works in the big picture. So, the second-best time to win your first global gold medal, like four Canadians did in Budapest, and introduce yourself to mainstream sports fans is anytime. If you enter the competition, you might as well try to win. Ethan Katzberg, Camryn Rogers, Marco Arop and Pierce Lepage didn't just try. They achieved.

And the best time for a gold-medal coming-out party?

The summer before an Olympic Games, when fans and sponsors are trying to figure out where to invest their intention and money for the 11 months leading up to the most-watched sports event on the planet. In a sport where apparel deals and sponsorship dollars matter at least as much as prize money does, that type of attention isn't just flattery — it's currency. So if we see this year's medallists on billboards or TV commercials or cereal boxes in the run-up to Paris, we'll know