If you’re thinking of handicapping the men’s 4×100 metres at World Relays, scheduled for this weekend in Gaborone, Botswana, don’t do it.
Doesn’t matter that team Canada will feature two of the fastest sprinters on the planet this year. Andre De Grasse, who runs anchor for Canada, ran 9.95 seconds in Gaborone last Sunday in his 100-metre season-opener, and that time puts him sixth on the world list entering May. One spot ahead of him is Jerome Blake, who runs the back stretch for Team Canada, and who, running in the same heat as De Grasse, finished in a blistering 9.93 seconds. First big race of 2026, but Blake’s already in mid-season form.
Still, don’t try to handicap any of it.
Gambling in general is a bad idea, and the 4×100 specifically is a volatile event. For the best teams the race is chaos for a shade under 29 seconds, with resolution after the third exchange. Provided your team is fast and skilled and lucky enough to get the baton to the anchor, he’ll hit the afterburners and cross the line before the clock strikes 38.
We’ve all watched too many relays to assume that any one race will unfold according to the form sheet. Dropped batons happen, as do collisions and miscommunication. It’s a difficult race to predict even when all the variables align. If Team Canada is the pre-race favourite on paper, nobody is a true front-runner until the final leg.
But if we’re looking for big-picture stories about a group of sprinters on the far side of 30 putting up age-defying results, the plot figures to thicken in Gaborone. When dealing with the 4×100, it’s always too early and too late for predictions, but as programs start the slow build to LA28, early season results portend more glory for the most successful team in Canadian sport.
Are there franchises with more hardware than the current iteration of Canada’s men’s sprint relay?
Sure.
The Montreal Canadiens have won 23 Stanley Cups, and the Toronto Argos are 19-time CFL champs. You can’t rack up 19 sprint relay global titles in a career, a lifetime, or a century.
But those are franchises, and I’m talking teams. Not just the same uniform and brand name, but the same members. Same phenomenon that makes historical head-to-heads in team sports virtually meaningless. You can’t forecast the current Raptors-Cavaliers playoff series based on their 2017 showdown because every player and coach on both teams has changed since then. LeBron James might hit a staredown three-pointer in somebody’s face this spring, but it won’t be Serge Ibaka’s, since he’s out of the league now, and it won’t help the Cavs, since James now plays for the Lakers.
But Canada’s men’s 4×100?
It’s been Aaron Brown to Blake to Brendon Rodney to De Grasse since the run-up to Tokyo 2020, where Canada won silver behind an upstart squad from Italy. And Blake is a relative newcomer, while Brown, Rodney and De Grasse have been competing on relays together since the 2015 Pan Am Games.
Opposing teams change, and so do their lineups, but this foursome is still making progress against everyone’s common rival – the clock. Last spring they ran 38.11 seconds for bronze at World Relays, but at world championships in late summer, they claimed silver in 37.55. That clocking is .07 seconds off the national record set by the same quartet in 2022.
WATCH | What makes Canada’s men’s 4x100m relay team special:
Right here, if you’re a member of Team Glass Half-Empty, you point out the downside of fielding the same sprinters, in the same order, year after year. Specifically, it hints at a lack of depth. Only five sprinters in Canadian history have recorded wind-legal, PED-free sub-10-second clockings over 100 metres, and three of them – Blake, Brown and De Grasse – are on the current relay team. When De Grasse had to skip relay semis at worlds in 2023, the drop-off to the next man up was steep. The team missed the final.
If raw speed is the commodity in question, in Canada it’s still concentrated at the top of the program. A lot of tip; not much iceberg.
In contrast, the U.S. produced 13 sub-10 sprinters last season alone. If the four fastest Americans all catch a cold on the way to relay camp, four more 9.9 guys can replace them. They have top-end talent and, by the numbers, unmatched depth.
But if you’re on Team Glass Half-Full, you point out that continuity is king in the men’s relay, and that Canada’s relay crew has more high-leverage reps together than any other tandem on the planet. The U.S. coaches invest time and brainpower in figuring out which sprinter runs which leg of which round of every world-level meet every year; Canada always knows who’s running and in what order.
Familiarity between runners lets relay teams salvage potentially disastrous exchanges. Go back to the first changeover during the 2024 Olympic final in Paris. Watch Blake hook a rain-slicked baton by his fingertips while Brown, at a full sprint, holds the stick steady. Most other teams DQ there. Canada managed to pass the baton inside the exchange zone, and finished with Olympic gold.
Anchored by Andre De Grasse, Canada’s men’s 4×100 relay team has won gold in Paris, making De Grasse Canada’s most decorated male Olympian with seven career medals (two gold, two silver, three bronze).
Or rewind to 2022, with Canada’s Brendon Rodney and the U.S.A.’s Eli Hall stride-for-stride on the third leg. A slight glitch on the handover from Hall to anchor man Marvin Bracy-Williams. A smooth exchange from Rodney to De Grasse, who had run relays together for seven seasons. Silver medal for the U.S.; gold and a national record for Canada.
Factor in Blake and De Grasse’s recent breakout performances, and the national record might be in play again this season.
Consider:
That 37.55 silver-medal run in Tokyo included an 8.97-second anchor leg from De Grasse, who didn’t crack 10-flat in the open 100 last year. He quietly separated from Puma this off-season, but the change hasn’t dulled his speed. De Grasse, a footwear sponsor free agent, ran 9.95 and 19.84 last week while sporting a Puma singlet and Nike spikes.
And last year’s world final featured a blistering 8.74-second second leg from Blake, who is a touch faster in 2026.
I’d say it all points to a podium finish this weekend, but I’ll stop myself.
Too much like handicapping.
And we don’t do that around here.
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