Poetry in motion: Canadian sprinter Aaron Brown flirting with perfection

OTTAWA — The perfect 100-metre race feels like poetry in motion to Aaron Brown, and 10 seconds can feel like a hundred.

The 26-year-old from Toronto has flirted with perfection more times this season than ever before, and will be a favourite to win tonight’s 100 metres at the Canadian track and field championships.

“When you’re running your fastest races, it kind of feels like time slows down,” Brown described. “It’s kind of an oxymoron, but the more relaxed you are, the more easy the race feels. And you would think in a 100 metres you would want to muscle it out, and grit your teeth and go as fast as possible, when actually your best races feel slow.”

“You feel your exact movements as if it’s slow motion. The race just comes easier.”

Brown is enjoying one of the best seasons of his career, recently dipping under the 20-second mark for the first time in the 200 metres in Oslo. A few days later he beat reigning world champion Ramil Guliyev of Yurkey to win the 200 at the Golden Spike meet in the Czech Republic.

Brown and Andre De Grasse are the only Canadians in history to run both sub-10 in the 100 metres, as well as finishing sub-20 in the 200.

Sitting trackside at Terry Fox Stadium on Thursday, the cerebral six-foot sprinter said there’s no better feeling than when everything clicks in a race. Think more grace than brute strength: If sprinters were cars they’d be more Formula 1 than NASCAR.

“When everything clicks, it’s poetry in motion. It’s spectacle. You work so hard for such a short amount of time, and there are so many things that go wrong in that short amount of time, that when you actually finally get it right, it’s a beautiful thing,” Brown said. “You’re able to appreciate that you were able to execute such a difficult movement in such a short amount of time.”

With De Grasse off to a slower start due to last summer’s hamstring injury, the spotlight has been on Brown. He won silver in the 200 at the Commonwealth Games in April and is currently the leader in the Diamond League standings in that event.

Brown admitted he sometimes feels hidden in the large shadow cast by De Grasse, a three-time Olympic medallist.

“The key is just to tell yourself that you have the talent and the ability to be up there in that position, and wholeheartedly believe it and then go out and try to show the world,” Brown said.

This year’s Canadian championships will determine the team for the NACAC championships in August in Toronto.