3 Canadian national champions to race Stockholm Diamond League

Thursday is the Stockholm Diamond League and there’s an impressive Canadian contingent making their way to Sweden. 2018 national champions Aaron Brown (100m and 200m), Crystal Emmanuel (100m and 200m) and Gabriela DeBues-Stafford (1,500m) are all scheduled to race. Brown and Emmanuel are both racing the 200m and DeBues-Stafford is racing the 5,000m.

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RELATED: Aaron Brown fourth in Diamond League 200m final

Brown has gotten his season off to a strong start with a win at the Shanghai Diamond League in the 100m, beating Canadian record-holder Andre De Grasse. Emmanuel raced at the World Relays in Yokohama, Japan earlier this month and has also run a solo 100m and 400m. She has yet to run a 200m.

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RELATED: Gabriela Stafford breaks another Canadian record

For DeBues-Stafford, Thursday will be her season opener. DeBues-Stafford is coming off a killer indoor season, breaking both the mile and 5,000m records this past winter. On January 4, at her first race of the 2019 indoor season, Stafford broke the Canadian indoor 5,000m record at the GAA Miler Meet in Glasgow, Scotland, running 14:57.45 to smash the previous record of 15:25.15 held by Megan Metcalfe-Wright. It was Stafford’s first time racing the 5K distance.

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Then two weeks later, Stafford ran a 4:24.80 at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix in Boston, where she won the event and knocked more than two seconds off Kate Van Buskirk’s record of 4:26.92, set one year ago at the Dr. Sander Invitational in New York.

Race schedule

Men’s 200m – 2:22 p.m. ET
Women’s 5,000m – 2:30 p.m. ET
Women’s 200m – 3:30 p.m. ET

Live stream

CBC is streaming all 2019 Diamond League events for free. Link can be found here.