Canada's Marco Arop claims world bronze in 800m, dethroned by Kenyan rival Emmanuel Wanyonyi
Edmonton native clocks season's best time of 1:41.95 on his 27th birthday
Marco Arop missed out on a gold-medal repeat.
The Canadian track star also didn't leave Japan National Stadium empty-handed.
The Edmonton native 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, who turned 27 on Saturday, 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.
Mitton falls short of shot put podium
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.
Canadian relay teams advance to finals
Canada will have a strong chance for a medal in the worlds' final event. The men's 4x100-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 4x100 final goes Sunday at 8:20 a.m. ET, with live coverage available on CBCSports.ca and CBC Gem. The well-drilled Canadians are a threat for gold after winning gold at the 2024 Olympics and the 2022 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 4x100 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-Eloise Leclair are the other team members.
LePage withdraws from decathlon
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.
Hall wins heptathlon
Anna Hall became America's second winner of the world heptathlon title — joining Jackie Joyner-Kersee — by wrapping up a wire-to-wire endurance test and cruising into the finish line Saturday to celebrate her biggest victory.
It's the first major title for Hall, one of the world's most consistent performers in the seven-part event, after years of close calls and disappointments.
Three years ago at worlds, she won bronze. Two years ago, she lost the title by a scant 20 points, falling less than two seconds short in the last event, the 800 metres, from taking the gold. Then, last year, she was forced to rush back from an Achilles injury to get ready for the Olympics, where she finished fifth.
Joyner-Kersee is the only U.S. athlete to win the event at the Olympics (1988, '92) and she holds both the world record from 1988 and the record at world championships from her victory in Rome in 1987.
Hall cracked the vaunted 7,000-point mark at a meet in June and a run at JJK's records looked in play over the two days in Tokyo.
Any hopes there got tripped up by a less-than-great long jump, but the overall result was never in doubt as she finished with 6,888 points. Hall went into the final event, the 800 metres, with a 122-point edge over eventual silver medalist Kate O'Connor of Ireland, and as one of the fastest runners in the 20-woman race, nobody was going to catch her.
Defending champion Katarina Johnson-Thompson finished in a rare tie for third place with American Taliyah Brooks. They finished exactly 3.61 seconds apart in the 800 to both end up with 6,581 points.
With files from The Associated Press
