Canada’s Brianne Theisen Eaton going for gold today at world championships

Canada’s Brianne Theisen Eaton could run her way to a gold medal in the heptathlon at the world championships today.

Theisen Eaton worked her way up to second place from fourth today with only the 800m remaining at 12:10 p.m. ET today – and she’s one of the strongest runners at that event.

Now sitting at 5,551 points, she needs to beat first-place competitor Ganna Melnichenko of the Ukraine by about 4.5 seconds to secure the gold. Theisen Eaton’s personal best is 3 seconds faster than the Ukrainian’s, so we could see a very exciting finish.

We could also see a double-gold couple in the multi-discipline athletics events as Theisen Eaton is married to decathlon gold-medallist Ashton Eaton. She surely looks poised to join Canada’s Damian Warner with a podium finish. Warner won a bronze in the decathlon.

A personal best of 6.37 metres in the long jump and a strong showing in the javelin helped Theisen Eaton move into second place.

As for other contenders for the podium, Dafne Schippers of the Netherlands needs to run 4 seconds faster than Theisen Eaton to pass her, but her PB is 6 seconds slower. Antoinette Nanou Djimou Ida of France needs to run 5 seconds faster than the Canadian but has a similar PB to Schippers. The UK’s Katarina Johnson-Thompson has run the 800m in a time close to Theisen Eaton’s PB, would need to run 7 seconds faster to pass her in points.

If she does secure a victory, Theisen Eaton would become the first Canadian to claim world championships gold since Perdita Felicien in 2003.