July 26, (THEWILL) – On Tuesday, Canadian athletes, Aaron Brown, Jerome Blake, Pierce LePage, and Andre De Grasse, withdrew from the Commonwealth Games.
All four recently competed at the World Athletics Championships, where LePage won silver in the decathlon and De Grasse, Brown, and Blake comprised three-quarters of the winning 4×100-metre relay team.
With the completion of the worlds competitions in Oregon over the weekend and the Commonwealth opening ceremony in Birmingham, England, on Thursday, the participants would have had a short turnaround timeframe.
In a statement, Athletics Canada stated that the decision was taken with the long term in mind. The statement read: “These athletes have had a challenging world championships in hot weather conditions and unfortunately must withdraw from the 2022 Commonwealth Games, to properly recover and prepare for the rest of the season.”
De Grasse, a 27-year-old from Markham, Ontario, served as the team captain for the gold relay squad. He and Brown were members of the relay team that won gold in Oregon and silver in Tokyo 2020, the latter of which was LePage’s first major medal.
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Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
