Already a fast sprinter, Blake’s a quick learner

Canadian is breaking out on the track, looks destined to break 10-second barrier

When Jerome Blake powered through a massive headwind in Bermuda in early April to run 10.38 seconds and beat a 100-metre field that included American stars Noah Lyles and Erriyon Knighton, one eyebrow went up.

A week later, when Blake posted a personal-best 20.04 seconds for 200m — becoming the fourth-fastest Canadian at that distance — the other eyebrow arched. And then the 26-year-old ran a personal-best 10-flat over 100 metres on May 1 in Florida It was time to stop acting surprised.

He was obviously breaking out, and the track and field world has taken notice. His early season shots across the bow earned

Blake a lane in Friday’s Diamond League 200m in Doha, Qatar, along with fellow Canadians Aaron Brown and Andre De Grasse, the reigning Olympic champ at that distance. Lyles and American compatriot Fred Kerley will be in the hunt, while Jereem Richards, Filippo Tortu and Femi Ogunode round out the stacked field.

He’s still a pretty raw talent, though some of the sharp edges have been smoothed by American coach Dennis Mitchell, whose Florida-based training group Blake joined after the 2020 season.

“Once I went to Dennis, and people saw what we were doing early on in (2021), everyone said, ‘OK, next year, once he gets a little bit more into the system, he’s going to be hard to beat; once he figures it out,’” Blake said.

“I’m still learning. Honestly, I know what I’m doing, but sometimes I don’t know some stuff, so I have to ask my coach and ask my teammates for help. I’m still learning and still trying to grasp how to execute races properly. The one thing I’ll say for sure, though, is my coach reinforced one of the areas where I was weak, which was mentally. The times I’d put down in training wouldn’t reflect in the meet because I was super scared and worried and my focus would drift off myself and I’d end up trying to focus on other people.”

In Bermuda, he shrugged off a ridiculous 5.6 metres-per-second wind and the fact he was in a final with four of the 160 men acknowledged by World Athletics as having run the 100m in less than 10 seconds: Johan Blake (9.69), Mike Rodgers (9.85), Lyles (9.86) and Brown (9.96).

His time seems pedestrian, until you do the conversion.

“The agents I know who are always at the meets, they’re all like shocked, and like, ‘Yo, do you know what the conversion is?’

I’m like, no. Somebody said with zero wind it would have been like 9.94, 9.95, and with some positive wind it would have been 9.8 high.”

He came into the season with personal bests of 10.06 seconds for the 100m and 20.20 seconds for the 200m, but he expects to go lower.

He is strides ahead of who he was in 2013 when his family moved from Jamaica, where he was born, to Kelowna, B.C. He arrived as a long jumper, but quickly learned to love sprinting. After working with coach

Pat Sima-ledding, he moved to Coquitlam, B.C., where he was coached by Tara Self.

“If it wasn’t for them I probably wouldn’t be here right now, ,” Blake said.