HAYNES PUTS BEST FOOT FORWARD
Olympian an example of ‘good fortune by … perseverance and dedication,’ coach says
Akeem Haynes often lies awake in the middle of the night wondering if the last six months were a dream.
“I kind of just stare up at the ceiling thinking of all the small things that are in my favour,” says the leadoff runner on the Canadian men’s four-by-100 relay team that won bronze at the Rio Olympics. “I wake up in a bed. I didn’t always have a bed. I wake up and I put on shoes. I didn’t always have shoes. I wake up and I have clothes to wear. Now I have clothes to wear. I actually get clothes now for free from a shoe company. And I’m Akeem.
“I’ve never had anything in my life, and now God has blessed me with all these good favours.”
Wearing his free running shoes, Haynes is one of the marquee athletes slated to compete at this weekend’s Grand Prix d’Athletisme de Montreal. Not satisfied with his 26th-place finish in the 100-metre sprint in Rio, Haynes is determined to up his game this season and peak at the 2017 world track and field championships this August in London.
Born in Jamaica, at age seven Haynes and his mom Carlene moved to Yellowknife, where he initially thought the snow was salt. At 10, the family settled in Calgary, where Carlene held down multiple jobs — as a cleaner, hotel manager and a receptionist — to make ends meet. At times, Carlene and her son slept on a mattress on the floor of a house that was already full with six other people.
Now 24, Haynes has a shoe deal with Puma — the same company that sponsors Usain Bolt and Canadian sprint sensation Andre De Grasse. Rest assured: the contract Haynes signed is a fraction of the US$11.25-million deal De Grasse inked with the shoe giant. But any help is a blessing for Haynes, who crashed in a sleeping bag on his training partner’s floor back in 2015 because he didn’t have enough money to rent an apartment.
“I think Akeem is too humble to realize his hard work brought him to where he is at today,” says Ken Rose, the head track coach at Crescent Heights High School in Calgary. “Akeem created his good fortune by his perseverance and dedication. Most people in his situation would have quit long ago.”
Haynes arrived at Crescent Heights in Grade 10 as a sensational running back. He struggled mightily in school due to undiagnosed learning disabilities.
He qualified for the world youth championships in track and field only to have a problem with his citizenship papers that prevented him from attending. Then he made the Canadian team for the world junior championships only to pull a hamstring. He received multiple scholarship offers from Division 1 schools in the U.S. only to have his marks prevent him from attending.
“Akeem was deeply depressed,” Rose says. “He truly felt he was jinxed. He didn’t think anything would ever go his way.”
Thanks to help from several teachers at Crescent Heights, Haynes got his grades up to the point he could attend Barton County Community College in Great Bend, Kan. From there, he transferred to the University of Alabama where he graduated with a degree in general health.
“Akeem’s biggest barrier was believing good things could happen to him,” Rose says. “He was able to overcome all those feelings.”
At age 20, Haynes qualified for the Canadian team at the London Olympics, but he was benched in a last-minute roster shuffle. Dejected and down, he kept running. In 2015, he ran the 60 metres indoor in 6.51 seconds, a mark that tied him for third in the Canadian record book with Donovan Bailey.
Then came Rio and the bronze medal in the relay. During the race, his mom Carlene celebrated so wildly back home in Yellowknife she accidentally knocked the TV off the shelf and broke it.
After Rio, Haynes took the bronze medal to show his mom in Yellowknife, where the mayor presented him with the firstever key to the city. Haynes also travelled to Toronto to take part in a Virgin Mobile panel on at-risk youth alongside Richard Branson.
But his biggest satisfaction comes from visiting schools where he talks to kids — some of them with backgrounds similar to his — about holding onto their dreams even when they seem impossible.
“You need to have faith in yourself,” Haynes says.
“You have to believe that the darkest moments won’t last forever.”
Of that, he is living proof.
At 37, Brian McKeever is a greybeard on the Nordic ski trails, but age is proving no obstacle for the 13-time Paralympic medallist.
On Thursday, McKeever and his guide Graham Nishikawa led wire-to-wire in the men’s 20-kilometre visually impaired classic race at the World Para Nordic Skiing Championships. McKeever and Nishikawa won gold in 57 minutes 34 seconds. Sweden’s Zebastian Modin and his guide J. Andersson were second in one hour 24.6 seconds, while Norway’s Arvid Nelson and Eirik Bye claimed bronze in one hour 58.8 seconds.
“Today, we had good skis, good guiding and overall I felt great all day,” McKeever said from Finsterau, Germany. “It was really, really hot today, and that just makes it tough to be relaxed when it’s like that. It’s a constant mental battle.”
McKeever, of Canmore, Alta., is Canada’s most successful Winter Paralympian with 10 Paralympic gold medals, nine world championship titles and 21 para-Nordic World Cup wins since 2005. He is devoting most of his time this winter to competing in longerdistance able-bodied events.