The dream almost became a reality in each of the previous two Olympics, when Andre De Grasse was in the headlines and on the podium as a contender to win the greatest of all Summer Games events
He wanted what Ben Johnson had … and then didn’t have. He wanted what Percy Williams won. He wanted the record Donovan Bailey set and the gold that went along with it.
De Grasse might be a 200-metre champion from the Tokyo Games, but what he’s wanted always is the title of fastest man in the world. That comes from winning the 100.
That didn’t happen Sunday night at the Stade de France. For the first time as an Olympian, in his third Games, the magnificent almost 30-year-old sprinter from Markham, Ont., did not find his way to the podium Sunday night in the 100-metres race. He didn’t even make it to the final.
This was new for him. Being left behind by the speed of an entire field. Being told by the clock, on this night anyhow, that he wasn’t good enough to contend any longer.
In a way, you wanted to hug him, as if he were one your children, and tell him everything was going to be all right. In a way, you wanted to look him in the eye and say: Six races, six Olympic medals before today, now six for seven, that’s beyond incredible.’ And you wanted to thank him and tell him that the 200 is coming up in a few days and he’s the defending champion, and after that there’s another opportunity in the 4×100 relay.
The Games are not over for De Grasse — just the event he has dreamed far too long about.
“I can’t let this affect me,” aid De Grasse after the race, and before the 100 final was run. “I’ll just go out there, reset and go from there. I’ve definitely got more in the tank. I just wasn’t able to show it today. I think I’ll be back.”
He thinks he will be back. He said that more matter-of-factly than emotionally. If he was devastated by the result, he didn’t show it. If he was torn up by his time and, more than that, watching 11 runners move past him, he didn’t show that part of himself, either.
“I feel pretty good,” he said. “I’m healthy. I’ll go from here.”
Every sprinter has a lifeline within his career and most male sprinters don’t last much beyond one Olympics. There has been only one Usain Bolt, the greatest of all Olympians, a three-time 100- and 200-metre champion. You can’t compare Bolt to anyone else who has ever run.
Carl Lewis won his second gold medal only because Johnson was disqualified. After Bailey won in 1996, there was a different champion in 2000 and another in 2004. And they were supposed to contend when Bolt took over the sprinting world and stunned everyone at the Beijing Olympics of 2008. Then it was Bolt and gold three consecutive Games and now two different champions in the past two. The odds are greater when betting on one-shot wonders.
This is what makes the story — and not necessarily the ending — of De Grasse all the more compelling. He was the little guy challenging the giant Bolt in 2016 with the two pushing back at each other on social media and playing to the crowd.
DeGrasse won a medal in the 100 that year and another in the 100 in Japan three years ago. And in between all of that, there were two medals in the relay and two more in the 200, with the big picture being the gold medal he won in Tokyo.
He goes into the 200 now as defending champion, which isn’t what he looked like or felt like here on Sunday night. But you had to wonder just slightly if he has seen his best days as a sprinter. If we’ve seen it.
He was never a great starter, never burst out of the blocks the way Johnson did. He was Bailey without size, not as big nor as gawky a runner, but his speed picked up as the race grew longer.
That’s why the 200 fit in better than the 100. But in De Grasse’s mind, he wanted the 100. That was what mattered, what he’s yearned for.
The flashing lights came on at Stade de France before the final race, all flashing in purple and other colours, with music blaring, setting up the signature event in a way only the Olympics can. And then the silence before the gun went off. The silence that seemed to last almost as long as it takes to run 100 metres.
But by that time, De Grasse had made his to the trainers room, watched the 100 metres on a television screen for the first time in his athletic life. He ran the fastest he had run all year in the semifinals, but his time of 9.98 was 12th best. His best wasn’t good enough. And all eight runners in a very tight, very close final ran faster than De Grasse with the obnoxious American Noah Lyles winning gold by photo finish over Jamaican Kishane Thompson.
“There was a lot of heat out there,” said national team coach Glenroy Gilbert, the former Canadian sprinter. “It was that kind of race. “It’s hard to say for sure (what the future is for De Grasse.) You never know what’s next.
“I don’t think you’ve seen the end of him,”
The evidence on Sunday night said otherwise.
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