AUGUST 3, 2024

Dear reader,

Andre De Grasse is the fastest man in Canada, but he’d like to be faster. In 2021, the six-time Olympic medallist set the national record in the 200-metre sprint, running the course in a blistering 19.62 seconds. Now he’s in Paris, where he’s eyeing the podium and hoping to make history once more by breaking the Canadian 100-metre record.

To do so, he’ll need to beat the time set by track legends Donovan Bailey and Bruny Surin in the ’90s: 9.84 seconds. That’s only 0.05 seconds faster than De Grasse’s personal best—an interval so short you’d miss it if you blinked. But, for the world’s most elite sprinters, every fraction of a second is crucial.

De Grasse is coming off a difficult run in 2023—he left the World Championships empty-handed for the first time—yet he remains one of Canada’s best hopes for Olympic glory. In anticipation of the men’s 100-metre final this Sunday, we’re revisiting Malcolm Johnston’s 2018 profile of the sprinter, which explores the unflappable calm that helps him move so damn fast.

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—Maddy Mahoney, assistant editor

He wanted to be a basketball player. Or an HVAC installer. Or a mechanic. Anything but a runner. And yet somehow, the skinny kid from Markham found himself on the brink of becoming the fastest man on earth

BY MALCOLM JOHNSTON | JULY 31, 2018

As a teen growing up in Markham, Andre De Grasse thought track was dumb and worshipped basketball stars. He only ran his first race because he thought it might help him meet girls. Now, he’s one of the world’s best sprinters. And to this day, he’s blasé about a sport essentially defined by pomp and bombast, swaggering entrances, Boltian arrow poses and mountainous egos. He may be dead set on conquering the track world, but he remains entirely non-emotive about it. The secret? De Grasse’s quintessential chill is precisely what makes him so good.

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