9.95 SECONDS
Markham’s De Grasse rocks sprinting world
Andre De Grasse, centre, blew away his opponents at the Canadian Track and Field Championships in Edmonton on Friday night, becoming the first person to break the 10-second barrier on Canadian soil in 14 years.
EDMONTON— Before he even walked through the gates at the Canadian track and field championships, Andre De Grasse was already the nation’s new sprint king.
He’s the man who has run some of the fastest times in history, says he wants to put Canada back on the sprinting map and isn’t afraid to race against the biggest names in track to do it.
In short, he’s the physical revival of a country’s desire to be relevant again in the track event.
Here’s what his mom, who attended Friday night’s 100-metre race, wants to add.
“He’s a normal kid,” Beverley De Grasse said. “Yeah, he’s running and he’s winning, but he’s still a normal kid that hangs out with his friends, they laugh and play videogames.”
And as a mother, she’s worried about the expectations being piled on her 20-yearold son.
“Once you run under 10 seconds is it expected you run under10 seconds all the time?” she asked.
Well, here at Foote Field, the crowd in the stands was certainly hoping he would.
After a trio of speedy heats, where his 10.07 was the fastest, the anticipation for a fast final was in the warm and breezy air.
Thunder rolled in just minutes before the final. De Grasse stepped into the blocks in Lane 5 and, 9.95 seconds later, crossed the line in victory.
His reputation as the saviour of Canadian sprinting remained intact.
It’s the first time since 2001 anyone has run a sub10-second100 on Canadian soil, and it’s just shy of the Canadian record of 9.84.
De Grasse, a student at the University of Southern California, has been running increasingly fast over his three years in this sport.
But he shot to public prominence in June at the NCAA championships in Eugene, Ore. That’s where he won the 100 metres in 9.75 seconds and, just 45 minutes later, won the 200 in 19.58.
The tailwind was above the legal limit so those times aren’t official, but they show his astonishing speed, the kind of speed that makes the entire track world take notice.
It’s easy to imagine the sigh of relief that must have gone through the headquarters of the 2015 Pan Am Games when De Grasse said he couldn’t wait to run the 100, 200 and 4x100 races later this month in Toronto. International luminaries like Usain Bolt may not be coming, but the Games now have a homegrown star — one who has actually run faster than the world record holder has in quite some time.
And, despite his mother’s fears, so far, none of this seems to be getting to De Grasse.
“I don’t have any pressure in this sport,” De Grasse said, in a recent media call. “I’m just having fun and coach Caryl (Smith Gilbert) tells me that all the time, ‘Just go out there and have fun.’ “Winning is fun to me.” He doesn’t get nervous racing the way he did playing basketball, the sport that was the centre of his universe until his high school team folded and, for a lark, he decided to race a friend at a track meet. And racing, he said, isn’t nearly as stressful as talking to reporters about where he came from or why he’s so fast.
Some things he doesn’t even need to talk about anymore. The story of his first race, in May 2012, is already part of Canadian running lore.
Wearing baggy basketball shorts, a T-shirt and borrowed spikes, he ignored the starting blocks and lined up as though he were a baseball play- er preparing to steal second. None of that is conducive to being fast on the track, so when he stopped the clock at 10.90 seconds, Olympic sprinter-turned-coach Tony Sharpe happened to be in the stands and knew what he had just witnessed.
A young athlete who can do that is destined to do great things.
Just as that first race hinted at the possibility of what De Grasse has already achieved — running a sub 10second100 is something most sprinters spend a lifetime training for and never do — listening to his coach at USC talk about him hints at how much, still untapped, potential remains.
Fast as he is, De Grasse is still learning how to race properly and his technique is far from perfect, Smith Gilbert said. And, since he’s so new to sprint training, he’s only doing about 75 per cent of what she considers a full load. He’s learning how to lift properly, is sticking with relatively light weights which limits his power coming out of the blocks.
“I always joke with him that was the worst 9.75 I’ve ever seen,” she laughed.
That’s why there’s so much excitement around De Grasse. If he can run this fast without perfect technique or maximum strength, the thinking goes, imagine what he can do once he has time to develop those?
Smith Gilbert knew De Grasse would be fast from the moment she tested him when he transferred to USC last year after two years of raising his grades at junior college. But she wondered if he’d have the mental fortitude for it. Not everyone does.
“You always know the numbers but you sometimes wonder about the mental aspect of it. Will he hold up through that?” Smith Gilbert said. “What I’ve learned from Andre is he just hates to lose, he refuses to lose, so he runs up to the level of competition that he’s at.”
None of that surprises De Grasse’s mom.
“He always excelled in sport . . . it didn’t matter what sport I put him in, they’d ask ‘did he play this before?’ ” Beverley De Grasse said.
“It’s funny . . . I always wanted him to do track in high school. I would say to him ‘go try out and make the team’ but he never wanted to, he just wanted to play basketball. I knew he had speed.”
Her son sees that now, too, and has come around to the idea he was built for something other than being a fast but short (five-foot-10) point guard in the NBA. His new plan? “I’m just going to go out there and try to do my best on the world stage and see if I can bring back a medal for Canada.”