Blind sprinter shows no signs of slowing down
High school athlete who arrived from Jamaica last year ‘wants to do everything,’ says coach
Two young men are standing on a gravel track. One tries to swallow, but his mouth is dry — nerves.
“You got this, hon’,” says their coach, Rachael Simpson, an upbeat, slightly built woman. “You’re amazing.”
She’s talking to Gavin O’Sullivan, the nervous one. He’s legally blind. Gavin reads Braille, walks with a cane, and runs the 100 metres in a little over 16 seconds.
He’s got a big race on Friday, the OFSAA meet at Varsity Stadium.
He won’t be able to do it without Lynden Bennett, the other kid on the track.
Lynden is Gavin’s guide. They run side by side, holding opposite ends of an elastic tether.
At this moment, they’re training for Friday. But they’re also showing their chops to a group of fellow West Humber Collegiate students and a phalanx of reporters. Before they start, Lynden tugs Gavin to the right so he won’t trip over any TV cameras.
Gavin, who has a personal best time of 16.76 seconds (the provincial record for visually impaired students is 16.18), starts tentatively, finding his footing, trotting almost.
Halfway along the gravel path, he picks up speed. His face is balled up with seriousness.
Lynden, an accomplished athlete in his own right, follows along. He has to shorten his strides at first, but toward the end he’s sprinting, too.
Afterwards, the partners are full of mutual praise.
“He’s a greater trainer,” Gavin says. “When I’m going slow he says, ‘Come on, come on, you can do it.’ ”
Lynden says he always knew Gavin could be a runner — “Because he’s fast. He’s dragging me!”
Walking past the bleachers, full of fans chanting his name, Gavin beams, his head held high.
No one calls him “Blindy” anymore. That’s the nickname he got in his native Jamaica after getting hit in the eye with an elastic band at the age of six.
At first, he saw “small stars.” He had to sit closer to the chalkboard. That brought on more teasing. He laughs about it now, with an air of wisdom and lightness-of-being that for a Grade 11 student is almost eerie.
Then, at 13, more bad luck: a soccer ball hit him in the face. Suddenly he could only see “shadows.”
Gavin, who says his hero is Usain Bolt, came to Toronto last year; his stepfather had been here since 2004.
The night his mother said they were moving to Canada, Gavin was so excited he couldn’t sleep.
He learned Braille only fitfully back home: his teacher was busy with her 60-person classroom and had little time to teach a blind student.
Toronto is better in a lot of ways for a visually impaired 18-year-old, he says, from our relatively accessible public transit to schools that devote staff to his needs.
But as much as the city has helped Gavin grow — as a runner, as a fluent pianist and songwriter, as a cheerful, sociable kid — he has given plenty back to the people around him.
Simpson, his coach, sometimes wonders who’s teaching whom.
“It’s been quite a ride. He just wants to do everything. And I’ve just been learning through him most of the time,” she said.
Lynden, his guide, has found a new sense of purpose in working with Gavin.
“What I have seen from him is that he’s more excited to come to school. He has a goal, he has a mission,” said his mother Lydia Bennett. “It became this ‘Oh, I have to go run with Gavin.’ So he has a push.”
After months of training, the pair are finally ready to test their mettle against other visually impaired runners from across the province. Gavin is big on goals. Long-term, he wants to be a musician or a computer technician. But for now, the track meet looms. After practice, someone asks him and Lynden what their goals are for Friday. “To win,” they say together, grinning.