PARIS — The world’s fastest man and Olympic sprint relay gold go together like track and field. Think Usain Bolt and Jamaica, Lamont Jacobs and Italy, Carl Lewis and the U.S.
, Donovan Bailey and Canada. And then take a moment to appreciate what this Canadian men’s 4×100-metre relay team pulled off at Stade de France on Friday, mining glittering gold despite not having qualified a single one of them for the 100-metre final. They are fast men, just not the fastest on the planet.
Jerome Blake and Brendon Rodney weren’t even in the 100-metre field. Aaron Brown never managed a single legal stride toward the finish line, having been DQ’d in the first round for a false start. And Andre De Grasse? Good grief the man had himself some Olympic-sized drama.
His coach Rana Reider was booted from the Games, and De Grasse tweaked a hamstring and wasn’t close to competitive in either the 100m or in his effort at defending Tokyo gold in the 200m. And yet, there they were, wrapped in the Maple Leaf, ringing the track-side victory bell, celebrating one of the least likely gold medals ever. Before Friday, the Olympic men’s 4×100 metre relay had been held 25 times, and 15 of those finals were won by the country that also boasted the winner of the men’s 100 metres.
What’s more, only three of those 25 races were won by a country that didn’t have a single athlete in the 100-metre final. The Brits turned that improbable trick at Athens 2004 and Stockholm 1912, the Soviets at Seoul 1988. And now Canada has done it, underdogs rising up to beat the favourite and the field.
Canada’s quartet went into the relay final with the eighth fastest qualifying time. Among eight teams. The Americans qualified first, just as they did in 1996, before those Canadians roared to their own upset.
“When I started this job, my goal was to get a team to win the Olympics,” said Athletics Canada head coach Glenroy Gilbert, who cherishes the 1996 relay gold that he shares with Bailey, Robert Esmie and Canada’s chef de mission here, Bruny Surin. “We won the Olympics in 1996. I wanted to coach a squad that would do the exact same thing that we did and these guys did it (Friday).
They surprised even me. I thought they’re definitely in for a medal if they do their own thing. I didn’t really expect that they would win.
I knew they were capable of winning. They believe in what they can do together and they showed us (Friday).” They are a team for the ages, but for how much longer? Brown and Rodney are the elder statesmen at 32, De Grasse is 29 and already committed to another Olympic cycle, Blake just 28.
Gilbert told CBC that he held a team meeting on Thursday night and asked them how they wanted to leave Paris, because there was no guarantee they would all be back, himself included, for Los Angeles 2028. They decided they wanted to go out as champs, not also-rans who had bad individual meets and faded into the night. They took the strands of their lousy individual performances and twisted them into a rope, pulled on it together, and brought home gold.
Brown likened that performance to their win at the 2022 world championships in Eugene, Ore. “In 2022 we won the relay and none of us really had great championships there either. I mean, I made the final in the 100 and the 200 but I didn’t run my fastest times.
None of us went sub-10 or sub-20 but we knew if we came together as a collective we have the chemistry and we have the experience and it’s all about that baton pass, if you get through the zone cleanly, we got a shot at it. We just relied on that experience and our bond. We’ve been together for years, same order, same group of guys, and we never stopped believing.
” Is there something to that? Maybe. They’re a tight group, especially when compared to the mobile mess that has been the American team of late. They have so many options at an Olympics, and just can’t seem to put the right mix together for long, which is odd because the U.
S. used to own the relay. They won eight in a row and 12 of the first 14, but haven’t crossed the line first since Sydney 2000, a streak of six Olympiads.
On Friday they were disqualified for a baton pass out of the zone on the backstretch. “I would love them to be up here and get a medal as well, but that’s just the relay,” said Brown, who trains in Florida with three members of the U.S.
team. “It’s not just about fast legs, it’s also about being clean through the zone and having that camaraderie. But a lot of those guys had individual success, so they’ll be aight.
” True enough. Kenny Bednarek can console himself with 200m silver, Fred Kerley with 100m bronze. Fellow American Noah Lyles, who won the 100-metres before contracting COVID, decided he would run the 200m on Thursday, trying for the sprint double.
If he had opted instead to skip the 200m, use the 24 hours to continue recovering from COVID and then run the relay, the U.S. would have plugged him in at the anchor spot.
But he finished third in the 200m and opted out, so they moved Kerley from second leg to anchor, and he never got the baton. And how about the 2021 Olympic champs from Italy? They wound up a close but frustrating fourth, and Jacobs, who was the world’s fastest man in 2021, could scarcely believe their fates. “If, before coming to these Olympics, they would have told me I would run 9.
85 (in the 100m) and that with 37.6 we would not even take a (relay) medal, I would have never believed it. But it’s the way it was.
This is the beauty and the bad of the sport. It’s also a complicated discipline.” It is all of that and more, and this Canadian team has it figured out pretty well.
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