TOKYO — Marco Arop missed out on a gold-medal repeat.
The Canadian track star also didn’t leave Japan National Stadium empty-handed.
The 27-year-old from Edmonton won bronze with a season-best time of one minute 41.95 seconds in the men’s 800-metre final Saturday.
Olympic champion Emmanuel Wanyonyi of Kenya led start to finish to claim his first world title in a event-record time of 1:41.86. Algeria’s Djamel Sedjati, who Arop beat in a photo-finish in the semifinals, passed the Canadian down the stretch and took silver in 1:41.90.
Arop was looking to become the third Canadian to defend a world title in Tokyo after hammer throwers Camryn Rogers of Richmond, B.C., and Ethan Katzberg of Nanaimo, B.C., won their second straight gold medals.
“I’m really happy to come out with some hardware, end up on the podium again,” Arop said in an Athletics Canada press release. “It was a tough one, coming in here. So I’m just really happy to be able to perform a season’s best today and come out with a medal.”
Canada has four medals heading into Sunday’s final day of competition. Richmond’s Evan Dunfee has the other, a gold in the 35-kilometre race walk.
Arop now owns three world championship medals in the 800 — one gold and two bronze. He also took Olympic silver at the 2024 Paris Games when he led for most of the race before being caught by Wanyonyi at the finish line.
Meanwhile, it was an agonizing result for Sarah Mitton, who wound up fourth in the women’s shot put after being in a medal position through five rounds.
The Brooklyn, N.S., product entered the sixth and final round in second at 19.81 metres, with top throwers Chase Jackson of the United States and Jessica Schilder of the Netherlands struggling, and only the first throw of New Zealand’s Maddison-Lee Wesche topping the 20-metre mark.
But Schilder moved to the top of the table with a throw of 20.29 metres before Jackson followed at 20.21.
Mitton, the two-time reigning indoor world champion and silver medallist at the 2023 worlds in Budapest, had thrown for at least 20 metres seven times this season and needed to do it again, but her final attempt of 19.62 was short of Wesche’s bronze-medal standard of 20.06.
Canada will have a strong chance for a medal in the worlds’ final event. The men’s 4×100-metre sprint team led by Jerome Blake of Kelowna, B.C., the Toronto duo of Aaron Brown and Brendon Rodney, along with Andre De Grasse of Markham, Ont., finished first in their qualifying heat with a season-best time of 37.85 seconds in a race that included heavyweight teams from the U.S. and Jamaica.
The men’s 4×100 final goes Sunday evening in Tokyo. The well-drilled Canadians are a threat for gold after winning gold at the 2024 Olympics and the 2021 world title.
The U.S. and Germany finished second and third to automatically advance out of the heat, while fourth-place France moved on with one of the two best times outside automatic qualification. Jamaica, however, stunningly dropped its baton and did not advance.
The Canadian women’s 4×100 team also moved on to the final by finishing fourth in its heat. Audrey Leduc of Gatineau, Que., ran a strong anchor leg as Canada posted a national-record time of 42.38 seconds — fifth-fastest overall and best of the teams outside automatic qualification.
Sade McCreath of Ajax, Ont., Ottawa’s Jacqueline Madogo and Montreal’s Marie-Éloise Leclair are the other team members.
Pierce LePage of Whitby, Ont., Canada’s fourth defending champion in Tokyo, ended his repeat hopes before the halfway point of competition when he pulled out of the 400 metres.
Canada was hoping to restore its potent 1-2 punch in the marquee event after LePage won gold and Damian Warner — the Olympic champion in 2021 — took silver in Budapest.
Instead, Canada’s decathlon curse that started at the Paris Games continued. Warner, from London, Ont., withdrew before the decathlon-opening 100 metres with a nagging Achilles injury.
After sustained success, Canada’s decathlon woes started when LePage missed Paris with a herniated disc. Warner was then eliminated from Olympic competition when he failed on all three of his pole vault attempts. He was second in the overall standings entering the event.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 20, 2025.
The Canadian Press
