Individual or team? Sprint schedule presents dilemma for Canadian men at World Athletics
De Grasse, Brown, Rodney might have to choose between 200m and 4x100
All three Canadian men entered in the 200 metres at the World Athletics Championships qualified for the semifinals, and that's awesome news.
Brendon Rodney, fresh off his 100m personal best at Canadian nationals, ran a season's-best 20.14 to qualify for round two.
Aaron "Mr Consistency" Brown finished his heat in 20.08, fourth fastest among qualifiers.
And, of course, Andre De Grasse, who ran 20.28 to finish second in his heat. If he still has the raw speed he has flashed in the past, he'll need it in his semi — he's one lane inside Erryion Knighton, who ran 19.49 last season.
If all three Canadians perform well, at least one of them should advance to Friday night's 200m final, which could present a problem.
Brown, Rodney and De Grasse form the backbone of Canada's 4x100 relay team, and have carried the program to one of its most successful stretches ever. Since 2015, Canada has won four global championship medals in the 4x100 relay, including a come-from-behind gold at worlds last summer.
WATCH: Trio of Canadians advance into 200m semifinals:
This year, the 4x100m heats and the 200m final will bookend the evening session on Friday, presenting what we in the regular working world call a scheduling conflict. Normal folks like the rest of you would try to move one of those commitments so you could honour both of them. Or, if you're like me, you punt one obligation to next week, and figure the situation will work itself out.
But for Canada's relay team, solutions aren't so simple.
They could run Brown, Rodney and De Grasse in the relay semi, and hope that whichever of them is in the 200 final has enough in reserve to go stride-for-stride with Noah Lyles et al later. Or they could let their Big Three concentrate on the 200, and trust a group of substitutes to qualify for the final. It's a genuine dilemma, and solving it will require good decision-making and good luck.
The setup is a long way from ideal, but before we explore the dimensions of the bind into which the schedule has placed Team Canada, let's give World Athletics decision-makers credit for what they actually got right this year.
False starts, for example.
I'm still not clear which infractions merit a yellow card — the St. Lucian powerhouse Julien Alfred received one for leaving early in her 100-metre semi — and which ones earn a straight disqualification. But I'll take confusion tinged with hope over the automatic, blatant outrage that bubbles up every time a sprinter gets turfed twitching in the starting blocks. If the rules are willing to distinguish between a reflexive flinch and a conscious effort to cheat, we're making progress.
Same with the daily schedule, which shifts events to avoid the worst of the heat wave enveloping Budapest this week. So the women's 5,000m semifinals moved from Wednesday morning to Wednesday night. The decision gave runners like Faith Kipyegon and Sifan Hassan precious extra time to recover from a punishing 1,500m final on Tuesday night, and spared them midday temperatures that might have dragged on their 5,000m performances.
WATCH: Noah Lyles breaks down his 200m title race:
But there's no similar flexibility built into the sprint and relay schedule. So we had women running 100m semis and final on Monday night, then returning Wednesday morning for 200m heats. The men, by contrast, had two whole days to recover from the 100.
And now we have the men's relay heats butting heads with the 200m final.
Of course, these runners are all professionals who train for both best and sub-optimal case scenarios. They have known this schedule for months and have had a chance to prepare themselves for two all-out sprints, just over two hours apart.
But they shouldn't have to. First, because anyone organizing a track meet knows the 100, 200 and 4x100 all draw from the same talent pool. Spacing those events out yields fresher athletes and better results.
More urgently for team Canada, the burden of the current schedule is spread unevenly among teams.
For teams like the U.S., depth is strength. Their four top athletes could spend the semifinals at the hotel playing Fortnite; four more sub-10-second sprinters can hop into the lineup. If Christian Coleman runs the first bend and Fred Kerley takes one of the straights, it almost doesn't matter who handles the other legs. Those two plus Tyreek Hill and Whit Merrifield could get the U.S. to the final.
That ability to swap runners in and out of the lineup can drag on continuity. Indeed, you could make a highlight reel out of the U.S. men's botched exchanges and other relay gaffes. They were leading last year in Eugene when a bad pass from Eli Hall to Marvin Bracy gave De Grasse all the opportunity he needed. Nine seconds later, Canada had its first relay gold at a global event since 1997. But the ability to mix and match is also an asset in situations like this, late in a long track meet, with coaches looking to load-manage their superstars into the relay finals.
WATCH: Andi Petrillo speaks with Canadian hammer throw champion Ethan Katzberg:
Canada resides at the opposite end of the depth-to-continuity spectrum.
The leadoff runners have changed over the years — from Gavin Smellie to Akeem Haynes to Brown, who ran first on last year's gold-medal team. But Rodney has run third for Canada at virtually every major international event since 2015, and De Grasse is as reliable as any anchor on the planet.
In April, that quartet opened their season with a 37.80-second clocking at the Florida Relays. It's still tied for the fastest time in the world this year, and signals that a full-strength Canadian team is a gold-medal threat in Budapest.
But three members of that team could potentially also land in a 200m final that likely will also include Lyles, Letsile Tebogo, Knighton and Zharnel Hughes, and who have all run faster than 19.74 this season.
And so we're right back to the dilemma. Sub out one of your top runners for the relay heats, and you risk altering the chemistry that has delivered so many results in recent years. Run the A-team in the heats, and you might cost Brown, Rodney or De Grasse sharpness he'll need in a 200m final that's so deep it's almost cruel.
So what do you do if you're making the decisions for Canada's foursome? Do you double down on the relay, knowing it represents the best chance for a gold medal? Or do you let each sprinter concentrate on his individual race, and trust the depth of your relay pool?
That decision, like the podium in the men's 200 metres, is almost impossible to make.
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