Audrey Leduc’s dream season continued on Friday evening at the 2024 Edwin Moses Classic in Atlanta. Leduc set a new Canadian record of 22.36 seconds (+1.1 m/s) in the women’s 200m, lowering the previous national record by more than a tenth of a second. Her time was also well under the Paris 2024 Olympic standard of 22.57, making the women’s 200m the second event in which she has achieved the standard.
𝐀𝐮𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐲 𝐋𝐞𝐝𝐮𝐜 𝐫𝐞́𝐞́𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐭 𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐄 𝐥’𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐢𝐫𝐞!
Après son record au 100m, elle vient de courir le 200m le plus rapide de l’histoire du Canada, ce soir, à Atlanta.
22,36 secondes.
14 centièmes de plus rapide que l’ancienne marque.
Wow. #GoLaval pic.twitter.com/nUYong3Cvu
— Rouge et Or (@rougeetor) May 31, 2024
Prior to this performance, Leduc’s fastest 200m time with a legal wind reading was 23.62 seconds in 2023. Her only other 200m race this season was a 22.77-second wind-aided performance (+3.0 m/s) in Baton Rouge in April. (Any wind reading over +2.0 metres per second is considered a wind-aided time).
Leduc came out of the bend in third position and chased down world relay champion Tamari Davis of the U.S. in the final 20 metres to take the win at the line. Davis was second, with a season’s best of 22.39 seconds, and another American sprinter, Kennedy Flannel, was third with a time of 23.13 seconds.
This is Leduc’s second Canadian record this season. In April, she broke the longstanding national 100m record previously held by Angela Bailey with a time of 10.96 seconds, becoming only the second Canadian woman to run under 11 seconds. Now, a month later, she lowered Crystal Emmanuel’s previous 200m record of 22.50 seconds by 0.14 seconds.
Earlier this year, Leduc told Canadian Running before the 2024 Canadian U Sports Championships that her goal was to qualify for the Canadian Olympic team in Paris for the 100m and 4x100m relay. Leduc has now met the Olympic standard in the 100m and 200m events, and last month she helped the women’s 4x100m relay team qualify for their first Olympics since Rio 2016 at World Relays in the Bahamas.
She is the only female Canadian sprinter to have met the standard in both the 100m and 200m events. Leduc can solidify her Olympic spots on Team Canada at the 2024 Bell Canadian Olympic Trials in Montreal later this month.
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone returns
At the same meet, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone made her season debut in the women’s 400mH, recording a world-leading time of 52.76; she won the race by three seconds. Canada’s Sage Walker (formerly Sage Watson) was fifth, in her first 400m hurdles race in two years. Her finishing time of 56.92 seconds puts her third in Canada this year. Walker is aiming to make her third Olympic team.
