MAKE IT A DOUBLE
Two days after blazing to 100-metre gold, De Grasse adds 200-metre title
His breath comes in short, sharp puppy-pants — hehh-hehh-hehh — punctuated by the long aspirating gasp from deep inside a heaving chest. You can almost see the heart pounding beneath. Beads of sweat running down his forehead. A visible trembling in the limbs.
Andre De Grasse bends over at the waist — that waspish slender waist, 28 inches round — and sucks air into his lungs.
But he’s grinning and, bracketed around the strained inhalations, exhalations, he hiccup-crows. If there were a moon up in the sky, instead of that enervating sun, De Grasse would be over it.
The 20-year-old from Markham has just done what’s never been accomplished before by a Canadian: run the 200 metres in under 20 seconds.
Friday evening, at the York U track, with a personal-best time of 19.88 — that’s gold.
Pan Am Gold No. 2, 48 hours after Pan Am Gold No. 1, in the 100.
His sixth race in three days: heats, semis, finals.
Almost forgetting about the Canadian flag and the obligatory ritual of a victory lap thus enshrouded, until a fan throws one down from the crowd and De Grasse wraps the red around his shoulders, walks back up the track, waves his arms in a give-it-to-me gesture. As in: Give me the love!
Why wouldn’t you? Why wouldn’t the whole country embrace this speed star ascending, taking us all back to days of grandeur when Canadian sprinters burned up the track, Bailey and Bruny, smoking hot, Olympic and world championship golden.
Cut from that cloth is De Grasse. And still hardly more than a boy, only a couple of years into his varsity career at the University of Southern California.
“A lot of people before this, they didn’t know how to pronounce my name,” the victor-times-two was saying, after practically climbing over a concrete barrier to hug his coach, then bromance-squeezing his first mentor, Tony Sharpe, and hailing mom in the crowd. “They used to say De Grasseeee. But now I think everybody knows that my name is De Grasse.
It’s really good to know people know my name and I’m making an impact on them in the track and field world.’’
If you don’t know this young man’s name yet, you soon will.
By Saturday night, De Grasse might very well be a triple Pan Am gold medallist, dependant on the results of the 4x100 men’s relay. Didn’t take a leg in the semi Friday night. Figured his teammates could secure a spot in the final without him (they did).
After all — six races in two days. And the way he’d looked after Thursday’s 200 semi, totally tuckered out, qualifying sixth after laying out the fastest time in the morning heats.
The 100, of course, gets all the glory — fastest man on earth stuff, title currently owned by Jamaican superstar Usain Bolt. (He uncorked a season-best 9.87 at a meet in London Friday.)
Holds the 200-metre record too, Bolt, but De Grasse is charging hard, fastest collegiate times ever at both distances this season, slicing a second off his 200 pace in just under a year. Only Canadian sprinter who’s ever run under 20 in the 200 and under 10 in the 100 — 9.75, posted at NCAA track and field championships last month.
The history-making just keeps coming.
“It feels amazing, the first Canadian to run sub-20 seconds, it doesn’t get any better than this. It just feels like an unreal moment right now.’’
The guy doesn’t even like the deuce, a race described as the Rodney Dangerfield of sprints, not so lustrous as the 100, not so respected as the 400.
“I love it or hate it at the same time,” says De Grasse, who also broke the Pan Am record. “It’s a love-hate connection. I don’t like training for it, but I love competing it.
More sweet-talking about the distance than a day earlier: “It’s a lot of fatigue compared to the 100. I know I’m good at it, so I have to put on a show.”
That he did, despite drawing lane eight, where he couldn’t see the rest of the field, and a pretty decent field it was too, if not the luminaries De Grasse will be competing against at worlds in Beijing five weeks hence.
“There’s no telling what he could ” have done if he’d have been on the inside of somebody,” coach Caryl Smith Gilbert observed.
Just prior to Friday’s race, she had her protégé run the curve out of the block.
“She knows if I got out on the curve, stay relaxed on the straightaway . . . the race would come back to me.’’ It was a brilliant tactical race, De Grasse accelerating through the final 50, overtaking Jamaican Rasheed Dwyer and Alonso Edward of Panama, silver and bronze in a dead-heat at 19.90. Still, De Grasse wasn’t sure if he’d won. “I knew it was close. I see Jamaica, Rasheed Dwyer, we were both leaning at the line. I looked to my left and I was just waiting for the screen to pop up to see who won.’’ Gilbert had no doubts. Best. Race. Ever. And De Grasse’s choice to run it, the 200, which he won’t in Beijing.
“The way his body was feeling, and all of the pressure, everything going on, he could have just said, ‘I’ll just get the bronze,’ ” said Gilbert. “But he’s a fighter. You can’t coach that. That’s natural.”
That’s De Grasse.