Canadian Running and Under Armour have teamed up for the 2025 Canadian U Sports indoor track and field season to highlight some of the nation’s brightest talents. Each week, leading up to the 2025 U Sports Track and Field Championships in Windsor, Ont., in March, Canadian Running will select one male and one female athlete as the Under Armour Athletes of the Week.
The athlete of the week will be a male and female track and field athlete who achieved a standout performance, broke a school record or crushed a personal best. These athletes will be featured on the Canadian Running site and awarded the UA Infinite Elite running shoe. University of Calgary’s Sienna MacDonald and Université de Sherbrooke’s Grégory Michel have been chosen as this week’s Under Armour U Sports Athletes of the Week for their performances on Feb. 7-8.
Sienna MacDonald, University of Calgary (CanWest)
The University of Calgary’s do-it-all standout, Sienna MacDonald, is back to her usual ways. At the ninth Annual Pandas Open at the University of Alberta’s Butterdome last Friday, the fourth-year athlete demolished her personal best in the 60m hurdles prelims, clocking 7.97 seconds–tying the 14th-fastest time in the world this year. In the event’s final, MacDonald dipped under her previous best (8.11 seconds) again, crossing the line to win in 8.00 seconds.
In the same weekend, MacDonald won the long jump with a near-personal best performance of 6.23m and took third in the high jump. She tops the national leaderboards in all three events by a wide margin.
“My goal going into the weekend was to run around 8.08,” MacDonald told Canadian Running. “I had been feeling really strong in practice, my legs were moving well and I felt like I had something to prove to myself. ” Her time falls short of the 2025 World Indoor Championships standard by a mere 0.03 seconds.
Performances by Calgary Dinos athletes don’t count as program records unless achieved at the CanWest or U Sports championships–otherwise, MacDonald’s run would beat her own school record of 8.16 by nearly two tenths of a second. “Hopefully I can run another sub-8 at one of those meets and crush my previous record,” she said.
The best pentathletes excel across all five events–but MacDonald outshines even some specialists. Last year, the Dinos athlete took home U Sports gold in the 60m hurdles and long jump after winning the pentathlon title on the first day of competition.
The 22-year-old admitted she’s still processing her performance from the weekend. “I set the goal of running sub-8 for the hurdles earlier this season, and now that I’ve hit that, I need to think of some new goals,” she said. “Ultimately the biggest goal is to stay healthy, but I’d like to try and defend both my CanWest and U Sport titles, although it’s going to be a challenge–people have been putting up some amazing scores and times.”
Grégory Michel, Université de Sherbrooke (RSEQ)
At last Saturday’s French National Indoor Championships in Nantes, France, Université de Sherbooke’s Grégory Michel clocked 7.89 seconds in the 60m hurdles to join MacDonald at the top of the U Sports rankings. The 24-year-old ran three back-to-back races with just 30 minutes of recovery, and just kept getting faster–ultimately surpassing his previous personal best of 7.91. He missed Sherbrooke’s program record by 0.04 seconds.
“I’m motivated because this is an important step in my season,” he told Canadian Running. “Being able to lower my time in each race and achieve my personal best in the third and final one was really satisfying.” Michel booked his ticket to March’s U Sports championships at his season opener in December, where he clocked 7.99.
This indoor season marks Michel’s first year year competing in U Sports; the French athlete moved to Canada in 2018 for a college physiotherapy program before moving to Sherbrooke, Que., to train with the university’s combined events coach, Luc Lafrance.
Michel is zeroing in on the upcoming championship meets. At the RSEQ championships on Feb. 21-22 in Sherbrooke, he’ll have the advantage of competing on home turf. “My goal for this indoor season is to become the U Sports champion in the 60m hurdles,” he said. “For the outdoor season, I want to improve my time in the 110m hurdles and aim for 13.60s, while also breaking the Quebec record.” His 110m hurdles personal best stands at 13.86.
