Canada wins Olympic relay gold medal in epic finish

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The Canadian Olympic men’s 4×100 relay team is on the podium once again.

And this time, they’ll be on top of it.

Three years after winning silver in the Tokyo 2020 Games, Canada finished in first place with an electric finish from longtime relay anchor Andre De Grasse, who was joined by teammates Jerome Blake, Brendon Rodney, and Aaron Brown.

South Africa won the silver in the race while Great Britain finished third. The United States team, without star 100m gold medallist Noah Lyles who tested positive for COVID earlier in the week, were disqualified due to a poor exchange during the race.

“We’re hoping for some magic, some great results in Paris, and hopefully we can contend for that gold medal,” De Grasse said in an interview with Daily Hive back in July. “After everyone’s done their individual events, we’ll try to put that all together and try to bring back a medal for Canada.”

It’s Canada’s third straight medal in the event, having won silver in Tokyo and Bronze at Rio 2016. Prior to that, they’d won gold in the same event at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.

Canada had previously won the gold medal at the 2022 World Championships with the exact same roster, beating the Americans on home soil in Eugene, Oregon.

Despite their longtime chemistry, the Canadians weren’t exactly favoured going into Sunday’s final.  None of Canada’s four athletes advanced to the final in either of their 100m or 200m events but were able to have the race of their lives in Paris to find themselves as Olympic champions.

On Thursday, the Canadian women’s team set a new national record in the relay heats but finished seventh in the final.

Canada has previously won five medals in the women’s event.

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