Can De Grasse give Bolt a run for the money?
Meet at worlds next month in Beijing
• A few hours before Andre De Grasse won his second gold medal at the Pan American Games, Usain Bolt crouched on a set of starting blocks in London.
It was opening night at the Anniversary Games, an ode to an Olympics three years passed, and the moment called for the star of 2012 to shine again. Bolt obliged. He ran the 100-metre dash in 9.87 seconds, and won.
Racing there meant Bolt was not in Toronto last week. But the long shadow of his accomplishments was because De Grasse, the 20-year old from Markham, Ont., with three years of sprinting experience, pulled off a fine imitation of the Jamaican legend at the Pan American Games.
In doing so, he won something else: the right to be judged from now on against Bolt, and the rest of the world’s very best.
“He’s an up-comer that now is looming,” said Peter Eriksson, Canada’s head athletics coach. “I think we’ve just seen the beginning of it for him.”
To recap: De Grasse won the 100-metre final in 10.05 seconds last Wednesday. On Friday, after Bolt had won in London, De Grasse dashed 200 metres in 19.88 seconds, chasing down the favourites from Lane 8 and breaking his own Canadian record. He ran the second leg for the Canadian 4x100-metre relay team that finished first in a stirring, easy victory but had its gold medal removed because of a protest over a lane infraction.
“It’s a great feeling right now — three gold medals in front of my home crowd, where I grew up,” De Grasse said Saturday night after the relay but before the protest.
“I don’t think it gets any better than this. I’m really happy about my performances. It’s unbelievable.”
There are two ways to consider any performance at the Pan Am Games. One is in podium finishes: It is the lens of immediate gain, and instant tangibility. Canada left Toronto with 26 medals in athletics — its best-ever showing. At his first multi-sport Games, De Grasse was central to that effort.
The other way cannot be quantified until later, because it acknowledges that these Games are not the pinnacle of track and field. In Toronto, De Grasse embedded his name in Pan Am lore, but the value of that will be determined in part by how he does on bigger stages.
It starts late next month, at the world championships in Beijing.
Bolt will be there. So will the United States’ Justin Gatlin, owner of the four fastest 100-metre times in 2015. They are veterans, still at the top of their sport, and the question is whether a precocious kid from Canada can hang with them.
“I feel like to them, they might not think this is a big Games, because it’s the Pan Am Games,” De Grasse said. “Even though I’ve accomplished so much here, I feel like to other people, it might not have been that impressive to them. I’ve got to go out there at the world championship and try to make the final, and get a medal.”
Being an unknown quantity is familiar to De Grasse. Until last month, the highlight of his sprint career may well have been his first race, at a high school meet in 2012. De Grasse stood in baggy shorts as he waited for the starter’s gun. He was at the finish line 10.90 seconds later.
American junior college titles followed, as did two eyecatching, albeit wind-aided, times at last month’s NCAA championships: 9.75 seconds in the 100 metres, and a 19.58-second 200 metres. He was ran to the Canadian 100-metre title in Edmonton in early July.
Then he came to Toronto, and reigned — even as he ran seven races in five days, counting preliminary heats and semi-finals.
“I’m not used to running that much, but my coach told me this is how it’s going to feel when I run in the Olympics next year, so get used to it now,” De Grasse said. “I feel like my body is adjusting to it. I’m going to be ready for next year.”
The hope now, then, is that he can build on this: that he can take his NCAA and Canadian titles and his two Pan Am medals (and the memory of the third) and see what they all end up meaning.
De Grasse will only compete in the 100 metres and the 4x100-metre relay at worlds, Eriksson said. The first of those will be anticipated, highly, but his performance in the second will also be telling. The Canadian coach said De Grasse’s portion of the Toronto relay was likely the fastest second leg a Canadian had ever run.
Two questions linger. Can he challenge Bolt? And just how good can De Grasse be?
“It’s hard to say. It’s all depending on how the training is going, staying healthy, no injuries and all of that,” Eriksson said.
“But I think, you see, a big star was born.”
I think we’ve just seen the beginning of it for him