Teammates call Andre De Grasse the new ‘6 god’ after 4×100 relay bronze at Tokyo Olympics

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/08/2021 (1517 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TOKYO—A half dozen Olympic medals across two Games. Dinner for six. A six-pack of beers. A six-pack of abs.

“Six medals, six-for-six,’’ announced Aaron Brown, stepping in front of Andre De Grasse in the mixed zone after the Canadian men’s relay squad had just captured bronze in the 4×100.

“Like Drake says, he’s a 6 God.’’

Jerome Blake, piping up from the background: “You beat me to it!’’

I have no idea what Drake says.

But De Grasse has now medalled in every Olympics finals race he’s ever run: 3-for-3 in Rio, 3-for-3 in Tokyo.

“GOAT,’’ asserted teammate Brown. “Simple and plain. He’s the most decorated male now, right?’’

Indeed. In Canadian annals, as the quartet reprised their bronze haul from Rio. Not quite yet a global GOAT. Usain Bolt can still make that claim, even as he watched his Jamaican crew slide out of the medals on Friday night for the first time after back-to-back Olympic relay gold. They’re aging, slowing down and clearly missing their sprint almighty. Fifth on this penultimate evening of track at Olympic Stadium.

But Brown might very well be prescient, designating De Grasse the greatest of all time. That title certainly seems within the 26-year-old’s reach, come Paris in 2024.

De Grasse looked embarrassed by the encomiums, quite evidently trying to push his teammates forward in the scrum, giving them their face time in the media spotlight. He’s been here before, twice in the last week, as 200-metre champion and 100-metre bronzed.

Make no mistake, however; De Grasse pulled this medal out of his gut for his guys. The Canadians were in fifth place on the handover to anchor De Grasse — HIKE! shouted Brendon Rodney as they glanced off each other. De Grasse lit up his lane, burning rubber, overtaking the Jamaicans, overtaking the Chinese, with Italy and Great Britain in his sights but he’d run out of track.

“I just tried to close the gap, tried to run them down,’’ said De Grasse.

Season-best 37.70 for the Canadians, their second-best time ever in this event, in the many years they’ve been together, although sometimes changing starters, sometimes changing legs. On this evening, the quartet was composed of Brown, Blake, Rodney and De Grasse. Italy’s winning time was 37:50 and I still don’t know where these paisans came from, with 100-metre victor Lamont Marcell Jacobs running the second leg. The British, nipped at the line, collected silver at 37.51.

They’re not a collective, the Canadians, like the Borg on Star Trek — 1 of 4 and 2 of 4 and so on — and they’re certainly not clones, each with a distinctive personality and competitive dossier. But they do manage to assimilate for relay, if usually a bit more fluidly than on this night when none of the changeovers was particularly clean and a couple were downright messy.

That likely cost them a different colour medal, for all that De Grasse came flying down that record-smashing bouncy track, running his heart out.

“The overall impression was we should have done a lot more,’’ granted Rodney. “We had a little bit of errors in our stick passes.’’ Albeit not as botch-y as the Americans, with three of the fastest 100-metre men on the planet on their cocky cadre and never made it to the final. “But other than that, we finished with a medal so we have to be grateful and we’re happy about that.’’

It’s all about the hand-off in relays and this outfit had scarcely had a chance to practise because of the pandemic blah-blah-blah. At their relay camp in Baton Rouge, De Grasse was expecting his third child, so couldn’t make it at all. And Rodney contracted COVID at the camp, so he fell out of the picture. “This is great for the little bit of practice that we had,’’ said Rodney.

At the end of the race, though, there weren’t wide smiles on the faces of the Canadians. Took a few minutes to cheer up, enjoy the bronze.

“We were more just kind of disappointed that we didn’t win,’’ Rodney admitted. Because, without the U.S. and the Jamaicans in decline, that opening was there. “It wasn’t worry about a violation.’’

(Recall an entirely different crew had to return their bronze in London, 2012, over a lane violation.)

“We’re past the stages of violations now,” Rodney said. “We get yelled at and we’re under so much pressure not to make those errors that we’re pretty good on staying on the check marks and staying inside our lanes and not coming out of the zone.’’

The Canadians had correctly anticipated that they’d have to put the pedal to the medal to dust off the Italians and the Brits, leery of the Jamaicans as well.

“We knew those were the top three teams,’’ said De Grasse. “When we look back at the film, I’m sure Italy just probably had some really good hand-offs. And we probably could have been a little bit better in our hand-offs. It really just came down to that, I think, but we’re super happy about the performance.’’

Well, the trio not surnamed De Grasse are super-happy with his performance. That was the Markham native’s eighth race in seven days. Mercy.

“He deserves his flowers, man,’’ said Brown of his relay bro and 100-metre rival. “He shows up at every championship, no matter how he’s doing during the season. Andre De Grasse is going to show up and come get medals.

“So I’m just gonna big him up, this is my guy. We try to put him in the best position for him to do work on the anchor leg every time, and in the future we’re going to put him in a better position and then hopefully go for the gold.’’

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Twenty-first medal, that was, for Canada, shortly thereafter the women’s soccer team making it 22 with their revolutionary gold against Sweden. Every track medal has been won by a Canadian male; every swim medal has been won by a Canadian female.

And De Grasse is one dog-tired young man.

“I’m looking forward to going home. I’m burnt out, I’m exhausted. I miss my family, I miss my kids. Ready to just take it easy and play daddy and have fun with them.’’

Rest now Daddy-O. Six O-bling from the 6.

Rosie DiManno is a Toronto-based columnist covering sports and current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno