Sarah Mitton tops shot put qualification as Team Canada shines in sprint relays at Paris 2024 – Team Canada

Mark Blinch/COC

With Canadian athletes having already earned three medals on the sector at Stade de France, Sarah Mitton is trying so as to add a fourth.

The 28-year-old shot putter threw for 19.77m in her first try in Thursday’s qualification spherical, good for first general. She’s going to compete within the shot put last on Friday.

She’s now trying to be a part of Ethan Katzberg (gold in males’s hammer throw), Camryn Rogers (gold in girls’s hammer throw) and Alysha Newman (bronze in girls’s pole vault) on the Paris 2024 podium.

READ: Shot putter Sarah Mitton on her Olympic targets and galvanizing the subsequent technology

Like Katzberg and Rogers, Mitton got here into Paris 2024 as a reigning world champion in her occasion. She claimed that crown at this yr’s World Athletics Indoor Championships. That adopted her silver medal on the 2023 World Athletics Championships. Then this previous Could, she threw a nationwide file of 20.68m, which is the world-leading mark for the yr.

In her first Olympic expertise at Tokyo 2020, Mitton threw 16.62m in qualifying. She referred to as these Video games a “enormous studying curve” however is feeling “fairly darn good” about reaching the finals in Paris.

“I already really feel like I’ve had the Olympic expertise for myself,” she mentioned. “For Canada, I’m going to go on the market and attempt to win a gold medal, or any medal.”

Mitton solely threw as soon as on Thursday, having comfortably cleared the 19.15m normal for computerized qualification in her first try.

“I’m simply feeling actually relaxed and actually assured, and that’s the area I needed to be in. So, proud of the one and executed, and I’m prepared to come back again,” she mentioned.

“You don’t have to throw far immediately, you simply have to throw far sufficient. I feel that was a pleasant simple throw and I feel I can actually construct on that.”

Trying to earn their very own podium finishes are Canada’s 4x100m relay groups, each of whom had been in motion on Day 13.

The ladies’s group of Audrey Leduc, Jacqueline Madogo, Sade McCreath and Marie-Éloise Leclair set a brand new Canadian file of 42.50 seconds of their first spherical warmth. That point despatched them via to Friday’s last.

“To lastly make [the national record] occur right here—as a lot because it’s magical, it’s what we labored for, and that is the group we’re,” mentioned Leclair. The earlier file of 42.60 had stood since 2015.

On the boys’s facet, the quartet of Andre De Grasse, Aaron Brown, Brendon Rodney and Jerome Blake completed third of their first spherical warmth in 38.39 seconds. That put them straight via to their last on Friday.

Canada gained bronze within the occasion at Rio 2016, and silver at Tokyo 2020. They’ve confronted challenges in Paris, together with a mistake by Rodney within the hand-off on Thursday, and a lingering hamstring subject that hampered De Grasse within the males’s 200m occasion.

“We’re all slightly bit fatigued however tomorrow we must be OK to go,” mentioned De Grasse. “It was powerful. I’ve simply obtained to push via [the hamstring issue]. Yet one more race, give all of it I’ve obtained, and go from there.”

Regardless of issues not going precisely to plan this season and at these Video games, all the group is able to, as De Grasse mentioned, give all of it they’ve obtained on this final race.

“I’m grateful and really grateful that I’m in a position to make my second Olympic group, come out right here and placed on for Canada and run with these guys once more,” mentioned Blake. “We now have a possibility to go win a medal tomorrow, in order that’s what we’re centered on proper now.”

In a while within the night in Paris, just-turned-21-year-old Savannah Sutherland took half in a blazing-fast girls’s 400m hurdles last. Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone of the USA set a brand new world file of fifty.37 seconds to win gold. Sutherland, with a time of 53.88, completed seventh.

Earlier on Day 13, Michelle Harrison competed within the repechage spherical of the ladies’s 100m hurdles, however her time of 13.30 wasn’t sufficient to affix Mariam Abdul-Rashid in Friday’s semifinal.