Canada’s gold medalist Marco Arop celebrates with his medal and national flag after the men’s 800-metre final during the World Athletics Championships at the National Athletics Centre in Budapest on Aug. 26.ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP/Getty Images
Pierce LePage has stamped himself as the top decathlete in the world. And it came on a historic day for Canada.
The Whitby, Ont., native became the first Canadian to win men’s decathlon gold at the World Athletics Championships on Saturday. Edmonton’s Marco Arop also became the first-ever Canadian to strike world gold in the men’s 800 metres.
LePage’s 8909 points set a world-leading and personal-best mark, in addition to being the sixth-best ever, en route to upgrading on his silver from last year’s worlds. His previous personal best was 8701 in that silver-medal effort.
The 27-year-old took the lead from second in the 110 hurdles – the first of five events on Saturday – and never looked back.
“Last time, I said let me cook and I cooked for you all today,” LePage told reporters in Budapest’s National Athletics Centre. “Everything went really well.
“I just think the biggest thing for me, I said it last year, I said it this year, is staying healthy. My knees are finally working, I can jump a little bit again, so I’m excited to get even healthier and get better next year,” LePage added in reference to past injuries, including a torn patella he competed through at the Tokyo Olympics, where he finished fifth in 2021.
Olympic champion Damian Warner of London, Ont., claimed silver with a season-best 8804 points, while Grenada’s Lindon Victor grabbed bronze with 8756.
“I’ve been competing with Damian for a long time … to share the podium with him is so special, especially for my first world championship gold,” LePage said. “He leads by example, so you know, Olympic champion and world champion.”
Warner was denied of his first world outdoor gold to add to an already decorated resume, having won indoor gold in 2022. The 33-year-old was in the top three the whole way and moved from third to second with the 1,500 – the last of 10 events in the two-day event.
“I think each of us decathletes know how hard it is to finish this competition, so that whenever you finish the competition, and guys are left standing, you just kind of share that moment together,” Warner said.
“You wrap your arms around your competitors and say, ‘Congratulations and see you next time.’”
LePage and Warner won the last of four medals for Canada on Saturday, bringing the country’s total up to six so far at this year’s worlds. Sarah Mitton also took silver in the women’s shot put shortly before.
Arop – who finished seventh at the 2019 worlds and missed the Olympic final altogether in 2021 – was just the second Canadian to medal in the men’s 800 at last year’s worlds when he earned bronze. Gary Reed won silver in 2007 in Osaka, Japan.
“It’s incredible,” Arop said post-race when asked of the feeling of winning gold. “It hasn’t dawned on me yet how amazing this is.
“I’m probably gonna wake up and it’ll hit me in the morning. But right now, just trying to take it all in, it’s amazing.”
Kenya’s Emmanuel Wanyonyi (one minute 44.53 seconds) and Great Britain’s Ben Pattison (1:44.83) grabbed silver and bronze, respectively.
The 24-year-old Arop looked at ease sitting in last place for the first of two laps before effortlessly charging ahead of the pack in the final lap and cruising to victory in 1:44.24.
“I’ve been able to do this before but to have the confidence to do it at a world final, I think that just shows how much I’ve learned from the past,” Arop said. “I’m just glad that worked.”
Mitton of Brooklyn, N.S., had a top throw of 20.08 metres – a season best – on her fifth of six attempts in the shot put.
“Amazing,” Mitton told The Canadian Press in a phone interview from Budapest with a joy-filled laugh when asked how she is.
“It feels really good,” she added. “It was a bit challenging throughout the meets, so it kind of makes it a little bit sweeter that I had to work for it.
“It didn’t come easy so I’m really happy to be able to have a season’s best here on the worlds stage.”
The 27-year-old was tied for bronze with the Netherlands’ Jessica Schilder at the 2022 worlds but lost her spot on the podium on a tiebreaker, with Schilder having had the next furthest throw.
“It was sweet to upgrade from fourth place,” Mitton said. “It was bittersweet last year.
“It was definitely a success for me to come fourth but being that close to bronze was just really challenging. So, really happy to have medalled and now I have something to work for next year (Paris 2024 Olympics).”
American Chase Ealey repeated as world champion with a season-best 20.43, while China’s Lijiao Gong (19.69) earned bronze.
In other results, Natasha Wodak of Surrey, B.C., was the top Canadian in the women’s marathon, finishing 15th with a season-best time of 2:30:09. Toronto’s Sarah Gollish placed 61st with a season-best 2:45:09.
Canada’s quartet of Zoe Sherar, Aiyanna Stiverne, Kyra Constantine and Grace Konrad qualified for the 4×400 relay final with a season-best time of 3:23.29.
The six-team Professional Women’s Hockey League is launching its expansion process with plans to add two franchises for the start of the 2025-26 season, a league executive announced Tuesday.
Speaking at the ESPNW Summit in New York, senior vice president of business operations Amy Scheer said the league will begin sending requests for proposals to several markets starting as early as next week, while also accepting applications.
”(We’re) looking for the right market size, right fan base, right facilities, right economic opportunity — so a lot of research to be done over the next couple months,” Scheer said, without specifying which markets the league might be targeting. “But yeah, looking to continue to build the league and grow the number of teams.”
Among the U.S. expansion candidates are Detroit and Pittsburgh, where the PWHL hosted neutral site games during its inaugural season last year. Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia would also be regarded as candidates after both were considered before the league established teams in Boston, New York and Minnesota. Denver and Seattle are also considered potential candidates.
In Canada, where the league has teams in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, Quebec City has already announced its intention of being a candidate for an expansion franchise. Calgary would be a potential option with the city previously being home to the Inferno from 2011 to 2019, before the Canadian Women’s Hocky League folded.
Scheer also announced the league plans to hold neutral site games in nine markets across North America, and is considering holding an outdoor game. Scheer added the league is also working on holding games in Europe, without specifying when that might happen.
The PWHL’s second season opens on Nov. 30, and features an expanded schedule with each team playing 30 games — up from 24 last year. The league has yet to announce where it’s neutral site games will be played.
Quebec City councilor Jackie Smith announced earlier on Tuesday that the PWHL has agreed to play a neutral site game at the city’s Videotron Centre on Jan. 19. The PWHL’s schedule has Ottawa playing Montreal on that day, with the site yet to be determined.
Smith called the development the first step in Quebec City landing an expansion team.
STAVANGER, Norway (AP) — Few chess players enjoy Magnus Carlsen‘s celebrity status.
A grand master at 13, refusing to play an American dogged by allegations of cheating, and venturing into the world of online chess gaming all made Norway’s Carlsen a household name.
Few chess players have produced the magical commodity that separates Norway’s Magnus Carlsen from any of his peers: celebrity.
Only legends like Russia’s Garry Kasparov and American Bobby Fischer can match his name recognition and Carlsen is arguably an even more dominant player. Last month, he beat both men to be named the International Chess Federation’s greatest ever.
But his motivation to rack up professional titles is on the wane. Carlsen, 33, now wants to leverage his fame to help turn the game he loves into a spectator sport.
“I am in a different stage in my career,” he told The Associated Press. “I am not as ambitious when it comes to professional chess. I still want to play, but I don’t necessarily have that hunger. I play for the love of the game.”
Offering a new way to interact with the game, Carlsen on Friday launched his application, Take Take Take, which will follow live games and players, explaining matches in an accessible way that, Carlsen says, is sometimes missing from streaming platforms like YouTube and Twitch. “It will be a chiller vibe,” he says.
Carlsen intends to use his experience to provide recaps and analysis on his new app, starting with November’s World Chess Championship tournament between China’s Ding Liren and India’s Gukesh Dommaraju. He won’t be competing himself because he voluntarily ceded the title in 2023.
Carlsen is no novice when it comes to chess apps. The Play Magnus game, which he started in 2014, gave online users the chance to play against a chess engine modeled against his own gameplay. The company ballooned into a suite of applications and was bought for around $80 million in 2022 by Chess.com, the world’s largest chess website.
Carlsen and Mats Andre Kristiansen, the chief executive of his company, Fantasy Chess, are betting that a chess game where users can follow individual players and pieces, filters for explaining different elements of each game, and light touch analysis will scoop up causal viewers put off by chess’s sometimes rarefied air. The free app was launched in a bid to build the user base ahead of trying to monetizing it. “That will come later, maybe with advertisements or deeper analysis,” says Kristiansen.
While Take Take Take offers a different prospect with its streaming services, it is still being launched into a crowded market with Chess.com, which has more than 100 million users, YouTube, Twitch, and the website of FIDE the International Chess Federation. World Chess was worth around $54 million when it got listed on the London Stock Exchange.
The accessibility of chess engines that can beat any human means cheating has never been easier. However, they can still be used to shortcut thousands of hours of book-bound research, and hone skills that would be impossible against human opponents.
“I think the games today are of higher quality because preparation is becoming deeper and deeper and artificial intelligence is helping us play. It is reshaping the way we evaluate the games,” especially for the new generation of players, says Carlsen.
At the same time, he admits that two decades after becoming a grand master, his mind doesn’t quite compute at the tornado speed it once did. “Most people have less energy when they get older. The brain gets slower. I have already felt that for a few years. The younger players’ processing power is just faster.”
Even so, he intends to be the world’s best for many years to come.
“My mind is a bit slower, and I maybe don’t have as much energy. But chess is about the coming together of energy, computing power and experience. I am still closer to my peak than decline,” he said.
Chess has been cresting a popularity wave begun by Carlsen himself.
He became the world’s top-ranked player in 2011. In 2013, he won the first of his five World Championships. In 2014, he achieved the highest-ever chess rating of 2882, and he has remained the undisputed world number one for the last 13 years.
Off the table, chess influencers, like the world No. 2, Hikaru Nakamura, are using social media to bring the game to a wider audience. The Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit” burnished chess’ unlikely cerebral sex appeal when it became one of the streamer’s biggest hits in 2020.
And in 2022 Carlsen’s refusal to play against Hans Niemann, an American grand master, who admitted to using technology to cheat in online games in the past, created a rare edge in the usually sedate world of chess. There is no evidence Niemann ever cheated in live games but the feud between the pair propelled the game even further into public consciousness.
Whether chess can continue to grow without the full professional participation of its biggest celebrity remains to be seen.
Canadian pairs team Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps along with ice dancers Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier headline a strong field at Skate Canada International. The Canadians say they’re excited to perform in front of a home crowd as the world’s best figure skaters arrive in Halifax. (Oct. 24, 2024)
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