The supersonic Andre De Grasse
He wanted to be a basketball player. Or an HVAC installer. Or a mechanic. Anything but a runner. And yet somehow, the skinny kid from Markham is on the brink of becoming the fastest man on earth. The accidental ascent of Andre de Grasse
Above all else, Andre De Grasse is chill. It’s his go-to adjective, noun and verb. It describes his default setting and world view. Track and field is chill. So is practice. Sponsorship deals are chill. Getting invited to celebrity-laden parties with Cardi B on the mike? Very chill. His public beef with Usain Bolt: both chill and “all cool.” In the exceedingly chill world of Andre De Grasse, even bad things are chill: his long-estranged parents, Beverley and Alexander, are openly hostile toward each other, which he finds, you know, pretty chill. Sometimes he’ll work in an alternative, like “laid back” or “cool,” but what he really wants to say is chill.
De Grasse lives in Phoenix with his girlfriend, the U.S. hurdler and sprinter Nia Ali. For a while, he had his own two-bedroom condo, but six months ago, he moved into her place nearby. He’d been spending a lot of time there anyway, so it made sense. Ali has a three-year-old son, Titus Maximus, from a previous relationship, and they all live together in a big house with a pool. De Grasse is comfortable around kids, and his relationship with Titus is a good one—he’s more uncle than stepfather in nature. Ali is a Philly native, blunt and excitable, and funny with assessments of her partner. When I asked her to describe their compatibility, I realized I should have known better. “We’re both pretty laid back, pretty chill,” she said. Lately, there is news: in late June, Ali and De Grasse welcomed their daughter, Yuri Zen. At just 23, De Grasse has become a father, a huge moment in a man’s life and probably an opportunity for reflection. I asked him how he felt about it. Your guess is correct.
For an international celebrity, De Grasse is an odd fit. He owns three Olympic medals and stands on the edge of the most vaunted title in all of sports—Fastest Man in the World—yet he still drives a Honda Accord, collects Air Miles, saves his money religiously and is uncomfortable with the weight of fame. But the most peculiar thing about De Grasse is how blasé—how goddamn chill—he is about a sport essentially defined by pomp and bombast, by swaggerific entrances and Boltian arrow poses, by mountainous egos and cosmic score-settling (was there a better Canadian sporting moment in the ’90s than the Bailey versus Johnson showdown? Okay, yes, but not many). He is dead set on conquering the track world and assuming the mantle Usain Bolt recently gave up, a process he begins this summer in Toronto, and yet entirely non-emotive about it. But here’s the irony at the heart of Andre De Grasse, the secret that no one else seems to realize, at least not yet: De Grasse’s unflappable, quintessential chill is precisely what makes him so insanely good.
The 129A McCowan northbound bus runs from Scarborough Town Centre to Major Mackenzie Drive East in Markham, stopping at Highway 7, which is where Andre De Grasse hopped on in the winter of 2011. He was on his way to an auto repair shop, where he was learning to fix transmissions and do oil changes as part of his Grade 12 co-op placement. On the bus, he spotted a friend named Mikhile Jeremiah, who was wearing sprinting tights and track pants, and clutching track spikes. Jeremiah, a student at nearby Markville Secondary, explained that he was headed to practice at York University, and he invited De Grasse to watch him at an upcoming meet. De Grasse laughed. He thought track was dumb, and he said as much: “What, you’re just…running against people?” It was a nonstarter. Then Jeremiah mentioned that there would probably be girls there, and De Grasse’s stance softened. If he did show up—if, De Grasse said—it would be to compete, not observe. Plus, he added, half-jokingly, he’d probably beat Jeremiah. “Okay,” Jeremiah said, “come prove it.”
The York Central Regionals brings together the best runners from the area. Some are highly trained, and you can tell. They are breathtakingly fast, exploding out of the blocks and gradually, not instantly, rising to full height so as to cut through the air rather than push against it. At full speed, they’re a blur of limbs whirring at the edge of control. Scholarships to the very best colleges in the U.S. are on the line, so the stakes are high.
De Grasse showed up in shiny blue basketball shorts and Converse sneakers, and walked around aimlessly until he found Jeremiah, who was surprised to see him—he’d assumed his friend wouldn’t show. Jeremiah delivered a quick primer on how to warm up and how the heats worked. De Grasse had no spikes; he lined up in his Cons for the 100 metres. He’d never touched starting blocks before, so when it was his turn to run, he removed them andhalf-crouchedatthestartinglinelikeashortstop,whichmade the race official laugh. The pistol sounded, and De Grasse exploded from his position, quickly hurtling to the head of the pack. His head bobbed wildly—he was staring skyward in one moment and at his toes the next—and his shoulders were hiked up awkwardly beside his ears. Somehow, he crossed the finish line in 10.91 seconds, roughly a second slower than Donovan Bailey’s world record in Atlanta and just under two seconds off the current record of 9.58, set by Usain Bolt. (Jeremiah, meanwhile, failed to advance.)
It was a dazzling achievement, but no one much cared, except for a man in the crowd named Tony Sharpe, an Olympic bronze medallist for Canada in the 4 x 100 relay at the 1984 Games, and now the head of an elite track and field school in Pickering called Speed Academy. Most kids make a thumping or slapping sound when they run; DeGrasse produced a violent ripping sound, at once light and powerful, and Sharpe could hear the
young man’s potential as much as he could see it. He introduced himself, handed over his business card, and asked him to tell his mother to give him a call.
Beverley De Grasse was born in Trinidad and Tobago, the youngest of 10 kids. She was the fastest sprinter in her grade in elementary school, but jobs were scarce and her parents didn’t see much value in a career on the track, so in high school, she stopped running. At age 26, she followed her brother and sister to Canada in search of work and settled in Scarborough, where she met a Bajan man named Alexander Waithe. Andre was born on November 10, 1994, by which time she and Alex had already split. Beverley worked in a factory sorting mail before it arrived at Canada Post, making roughly $10 an hour, and lived in a small basement apartment near Finch and Midland, splitting the space and the $750 rent with a friend.
Andre was a busy kid, brimming with energy. As a toddler, he would scamper up the stairs toward the street so often that Beverley had to install a gate to keep him penned in. In the evenings, she would take him to the field opposite their apartment and let him run—and he would, endlessly, gleefully. When Andre was four, he won the award for most goals in the season on his soccer team. Later, he discovered basketball, and when Beverley came through the door after work, he’d be standing there, shoes and uniform on, raring to go.
Andre was so gifted in everything he tried—baseball, soccer, basketball—that he found practice torturously dull. He was distractible and easily bored. It didn’t help that he was popular with just about everyone, so stretching became an opportunity to chat. So did warm-up laps, drills and cool-down. He was loose and imprecise with his form, and it drove Beverley crazy, but he always excelled when it mattered.
Beverley certified as an early childhood educator through Seneca College, completing assignments on her lunch breaks and in the evenings. Andre would stay at his uncle’s place while she was in school, and he began to act out. Her program stopped during the summer, and one day Andre asked her if she was going to be around more often. When she said yes, he wrapped his arms around her legs, hugged her tight and wouldn’t let go. She soon landed a job in a daycare, one of three staff tending to 24 toddlers.
Finances were tough on a single salary, but by late 2000, Beverley had saved enough to buy a modest two-bedroom semi in Markham. She and Andre did everything together—homework, vacations, delivering the paper (she would drive him, much to her annoyance). Andre would see his father on weekends, but Waithe had other kids by another woman, and he and Andre were never close. Beverley and Alexander were bitter enemies, but Andre didn’t get worked up about that, or anything, really. In the De Grasse household, there were no adolescent meltdowns or blowups, no shouting matches or door slams. “I’ve never seen this kid angry, you know?” says his mom. “Upset? No.” He was observant and pensive, always processing but rarely sharing his
de grasse thought track was dumB. “what, you’re just…running against people?”