When it comes to athletics in 2024, Canada truly blessed with depth of field

Early one weekday evening in August of 2009, I hustled up an embankment outside Olympiastadion Berlin, trying to reach a flag vendor's tent before the start of the evening session at the IAAF World Championships.

The meet had begun the previous Saturday, and by Tuesday of the following week, two flags were in short supply. Jamaican flags were scarce, naturally, because August 2009 gave us Peak Usain Bolt. The sprint GOAT opened those worlds with a 9.58 second clocking to win the 100 metres, smashing his own world record and winning over local fans in the process. If you couldn't find a Jamaican flag that week, it was likely because a German spectator beat you to the vendor's tent, then headed inside the stadium to wave it in support of their new favourite athlete.

Canadian flags were equally tough to find that week, likely because vendors didn't stock many to begin with. Can't say I blame them. Bolt's peak corresponded with a low period for Canadian track and field, and Team Canada left Berlin with one solitary medal — a silver for Priscilla Lopes-Schliep in the women's 100m hurdles. 

Either way, I copped the last Canadian flag, draped it over my shoulders, and was marching toward the stadium when a Jamaican fan stopped me. I didn't ask for a passport or birth certificate, but this guy — a middle-aged Black man with shades and a Jamaican-flag t-shirt — struck me as an actual Jamaican, and not one of the fairweather fans dotting the stands that week. He looked at me, then at my flag, then back at me, and asked a rhetorical, but halfway serious question.

"Canada?" he said. "Are you guys still running?"

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"Some of us are," I said, because in 2009, Canada's medal prospects