{"id":68031,"date":"2026-04-26T13:04:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T17:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canada.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/26\/canadian-sprint-star-de-grasse-has-strong-season-opening-effort-in-botswana\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T13:22:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T17:22:00","slug":"canadian-sprint-star-de-grasse-has-strong-season-opening-effort-in-botswana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canada.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/26\/canadian-sprint-star-de-grasse-has-strong-season-opening-effort-in-botswana\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian sprint star De Grasse has strong season-opening effort in Botswana"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsnet.ca\/olympics\/article\/canadian-sprint-star-de-grasse-has-strong-season-opening-effort-in-botswana\/\">Canadian sprint star De Grasse has strong season-opening effort in Botswana<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsnet.ca\/olympics\/article\/canadian-sprint-star-de-grasse-has-strong-season-opening-effort-in-botswana\/\">https:\/\/www.sportsnet.ca\/olympics\/article\/canadian-sprint-star-de-grasse-has-strong-season-opening-effort-in-botswana\/<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-04-26 13:04:00<\/a><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<p>Canadian star sprinter Andre De Grasse showed no signs of slowing down in his season opener on Sunday at the Botswana Golden Grand Prix.<\/p>\n<p>The seven-time Olympic medallist won the men&#8217;s 200 metres in 19.84 seconds, easily taking first, with Toronto&#8217;s Aaron Brown placing second in 20.07 seconds. The time was De Grasse&#8217;s fastest in the distance since his season-concluding 19.76 second-effort in 2023.<\/p>\n<p>In the 100, the 31-year-old De Grasse finished second, narrowly edging Kenya&#8217;s Ferdinand Ominyala (9.95). It was De Grasse&#8217;s fastest time in the event since he won Olympic bronze at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, where he ran a personal best of 9.89 seconds.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Nice way to open up the season running some strong times,&#8221; De Grasse said. &#8220;But for now, I&#8217;m focused on the World Relays and teaming up with the guys next weekend and representing Canada.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Jerome Blake, from Kelowna, B.C., set a new personal best in winning the 100 with a time of 9.93 seconds.<\/p>\n<p>In the women&#8217;s 100, Canadian Audrey Leduc took third in 11.10 seconds.<\/p>\n<p>The Gatineau, Que., native placed behind Americans Gabby Thomas (10.95) and Cambrea Sturgis (11.07).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsnet.ca\/olympics\/article\/canadian-sprint-star-de-grasse-has-strong-season-opening-effort-in-botswana\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Canadian sprint star De Grasse has strong season-opening effort in Botswana https:\/\/www.sportsnet.ca\/olympics\/article\/canadian-sprint-star-de-grasse-has-strong-season-opening-effort-in-botswana\/ Publish Date: 2026-04-26&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68032,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.sportsnet.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/degrasse.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68031"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68031"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canada.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68033,"href":"https:\/\/canada.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68031\/revisions\/68033"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}