‘A nightmare’: Champion sprinter Bruny Surin shocked by McGill’s athletics cuts

MONTREAL – Bruny Surin thought it was a hoax.

McGill University’s historic track and field program is a fixture in Canada’s amateur sports landscape so when word flashed across Surin’s phone that the school was scrapping it after 125 years, the Olympic champion sprinter didn’t buy it.

“To me, that news is a nightmare,” Surin said in a phone interview Thursday. “To tell you the truth, I saw it first on Instagram and I was like, OK, well, like our friend in the States likes to say, ‘It’s fake news.’

“I didn’t believe it.”

Surin, a 4×100 gold medallist at the 1996 Olympics, is among a long list of Canadian athletes expressing their disappointment after McGill announced last week it will cut 25 sports teams because an internal audit and external review made it clear the “current structure was no longer sustainable.”

The school will also axe the women’s rugby, men’s volleyball and lacrosse teams, among several others, at the end of the 2025-26 season, citing a lack of facility space, budget and human resources.

The university said its committee used “multiple criteria” while reviewing teams over several months, including the RSEQ sport model — the framework used by Quebec’s governing body for school sport — competitive viability, recruitment pools and resource requirements. Many track and field athletes have since wondered why their program didn’t qualify.

Since the announcement, Surin said he has begun mobilizing to find solutions.

“I’m in contact with a person who has influence in the administration,” said the Montreal native. “I said to that person I’m gonna make myself available. Let’s have two hours of brainstorming, show me the portrait.

“After 125 years, it’s like why don’t we sit down again at the table, involving everybody to say, this is the portrait, this is the situation, and is there something like an option B that we can do? Is this something that we can think of outside the box?

“When you talk about Canadian universities and you’re talking about McGill, it’s like ‘Wow, McGill is the thing.’ Even outside of Canada, McGill is the thing.”

Surin, the Chef de Mission at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, said he was encouraged by what Canada’s record medal haul at a non-boycotted Summer Games could mean for the growth of sport back home.

“I’m like, this is going to be great for Canada with all the good exposure and results that we have, it’s gonna be good,” he said. “Now hearing that, it’s not good at all.”

“We’re going backward.”

Andre De Grasse, a seven-time Olympic sprinting medallist, also pleaded for the university to reverse its decision.

“What’s happening at McGill matters across Canada,” he said in a statement. “When a leading university cuts a program like this, it sends the wrong message to current and future athletes and to university leadership across the country. 

“Track and field has always been one of our most diverse and inclusive sports, and it deserves to be protected, not eliminated.”

Nicolas Macrozonaris never attended McGill as a student, but he says the university’s track and field program played a crucial role in his development into an Olympic-level sprinter.

Now the two-time Olympian and former Canadian champion from Laval, Que., is worried the next generation won’t have the same opportunities.

“They played a big part in not only developing my athletic career, but all the Olympic athletes that come out of Montreal,” he said. “It’s such an important part, and I’m very disappointed in this.”

Macrozonaris relied on McGill’s program and the Tomlinson Fieldhouse — one of three indoor banked tracks at Canadian universities — to meet international competition standards. 

Longtime McGill track coach Dennis Barrett always made accommodations, and in 2002, Macrozonaris set a 60-metre track record of 6.56 seconds.

“It was a time that I believe qualified me for the world indoor championships,” he said. “When you have opportunities, athletes thrive. Take away the opportunities, maybe today I wouldn’t have a chance to run the standard.

“I feel that as people start to understand the importance of having this institution, a track team that’s been there for over a hundred twenty years, they start to appreciate it and maybe they’re gonna re-evaluate or gonna find a solution to reinstate it.”

McGill did not respond to requests for comment on how shutting down the track and field program would affect the Tomlinson Fieldhouse, nor did it share the projected cost savings from these cuts.

The reductions come amid financial challenges for Quebec universities, including declining international student enrolment. The university announced in May that it laid off 60 people to balance its budget and said it anticipated a “staggering” $185 million in lost revenue over the next four years due to government measures.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 27, 2025.