How an Ontario man who just started running made Team Canada

Two weeks before the 2025 Canadian XC Championships, Matt Talbot of West McGillivray, Ont., drove 30 minutes to the host course in London to do one final race-paced workout at Fanshawe Golf Club.

As Talbot stepped out of his car in the parking lot, he says he stumbled upon a collectible Jack Nicklaus “Golden Bear”-branded coin. Superstitious by nature, he walked over to the fairway of the 8th hole (where the finish line would be) and buried it in the middle, just like Team Canada’s hockey team did at centre ice before the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. 

The 26-year-old finished fourth in the men’s 10K and was selected as one of six men to represent Team Canada at the 2026 World XC Championships in Tallahassee, Fla., on Jan. 10. Talbot, who only started running last year, will now race on the same team as one of the greatest Canadian distance runners in history—Moh Ahmed.

Struggling to fully grasp his accomplishment, Talbot says he wasn’t able to sleep for a couple of nights following the race. He says it feels like just yesterday he was casually training 25 kilometres a week to break 38 minutes for 10K, which he did at a race in 2024—running 34 minutes.

Talbot remembers chatting with a former high school track and field teammate (from a decade ago) after that race, who ran for Western University at the time. “I told him I was attending Fanshawe College, and he said my 10K time was pretty good and that I should consider emailing the Fanshawe XC coach to see if I could train with the team.”

In three months of training with Fanshawe, Talbot doubled his mileage and ended up second at the 2024 Canadian Collegiate Championships (CCAA). After the successful season, his coach, Seth Marcaccio, asked if he’d like to run ACXC. Talbot declined, choosing instead to spend the winter training for a new goal: breaking 30 minutes for 10K in the spring. He went on to crack the top 10 at Toronto’s Spring Run Off 8K, then shattered his sub-30 goal at the 2025 Vancouver Sun Run a few weeks later, where he ran 29:57 for 13th.

In less than one year, Talbot had lowered his 10K best by five minutes.

Talbot’s improvement is astronomical at a level where seconds do not come easily. His coach, Marcaccio, said it’s hard to ignore his natural talent, but he doesn’t believe that talent alone is what’s carried him.

“He’s extremely driven and coachable,” Marcaccio says. “Even if he’s struggling in a session, he never complains. He shows up, puts in the work, and calls it a day.”

Talbot says Marcaccio’s goals for him come across as “wild” at first, but seeing how fast a sub-30-minute 10K came, he’s starting to believe anything is possible.

Marcaccio recalls bringing up the possibility of Talbot making the Canadian XC team during a long run earlier this year. “I don’t think Matt really believed it was a possibility,” he says. “But I thought if he stayed healthy and stuck with the training plan, it would be realistic.”

On Nov. 30, as the men’s 10K at ACXC approached its final lap, Talbot suddenly found himself leading the race, with Ahmed close behind. He remembers thinking: “Am I good enough to hold him off and win this race?” He ultimately finished fourth in 29:49 and spent the next few hours filling out paperwork and declaration forms for Athletics Canada and doping control.

“The whole process was entirely new to me,” says Talbot. “I tried on the Team Canada gear in the bathroom, and I remember doing a lap—I couldn’t believe it.”

Despite being one of the fastest runners in Canada and making the World XC team, Talbot says he still feels relatively new to the sport. He admits he has never tried bi-carb and, more embarrassingly, only bought a heart-rate monitor to use for training earlier this week. “I just got it and have only used it twice,” Talbot laughs. “My coach says I need to make sure I’m training in the right zones.”

Has his rise been too quick? Talbot doesn’t think so. He says he’s still running under 100 kilometres per week and feels there’s a lot of untapped potential.

Marcaccio agrees, reiterating that Talbot has only scratched the surface. “He’s still pretty new to things, and I think that’s good for a few reasons. One is that he’s still a long way from reaching his peak, and the other is that he’s fearless when he races,” he says. “There’s a lot of room for him to get faster.”

Talbot says the runway of not knowing what might come next is “incredibly motivating.” He has aspirations to break 13:30 over 5,000m (a feat achieved by only 25 Canadians), and even test himself over a half-marathon. “I want to keep lowering times as much as I can,” he says. “For right now, the focus is on the next five weeks.”