Clutch athlete who runs the last leg of the relay to help his team clinch an unlikely gold. Aspiring actor. Full-time philanthropist and a hands-on dad, Canada’s seven-time Olympic medallist Andre De Grasse already wears quite a few hats. He donned another one on Thursday — that of Guest Sports Editor at The Times Of India’s Mumbai office in his capacity as international event ambassador of the 2026 Tata Mumbai Marathon. Having arrived from his training base in Florida in the wee hours, there was no trace of jet-lag in the 31-year-old even as he replied in the negative when asked if he managed to catch some sleep. But he fielded questions sharply on Usain Bolt, Enhanced Games, cricket and his goal of getting to one more Olympics in 2028 at Los Angeles, which he calls his ‘home Games’ because the Olympic stadium is a short sprint away from where he studied.Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!Is this your first visit to India?Yeah, first time in India, first time in Mumbai. From seeing the city for the first five or six hours, it is a beautiful city. I have a nice view from my room, and I see Marine Drive. Yeah, so it is a really nice view, and it kind of reminds me a little bit of home, a little bit of Toronto, because we have the tall buildings and the CN Tower, and we have the lake and everything. But your city is much, much bigger.
You are here as an ambassador of the Tata Mumbai Marathon. We are curious to know whether you have tried distance running in any form?The most I ever ran was one mile. Some of my family members participated in a 5k or a 10k, but not anything like a marathon. A marathon is extremely hard. 43 kms, 26 miles, almost. It is definitely something I watched, but I never participated in. But maybe one day, we will see.From basketball at school to sprinting in the Olympics. That’s quite a drastic switch. You played against Andrew Wiggins in high school who went to play in the NBA for Miami Heat. Did any of the basketball training help?In terms of athleticism, yes. Because in track, there is a lot of jumping involved, like plyometrics and stuff. So basketball is similar. You have to be jumping a lot and trying to get the ball, and being agile and moving side to side. So I think I brought a little bit of that to track, and it was easier for me when I was doing drills in track that were kind of similar to when I was doing basketball drills.Your sprinting style of starting slow and then accelerating has been compared with Usain Bolt and Bolt himself had said in Rio that you run just like him. Can you elaborate on the comparisons? Did that put additional pressure on you?Track was not my first sport, so for me, when I got into the sport, I was just having fun. I didn’t think of it as, ‘Oh, I am going to be an Olympian one day’, or be a professional. I just had fun. I got into track in the last year of my high school. I bumped into a friend on the school bus, and we were joking around about who was fast and who was not fast. I went out to the track meet and I ended up racing him and beating him. That was when one of the Olympians from Team Canada, Tony Sharpe, discovered me and said, ‘Hey kid, Andre, you are pretty fast. You should try this sport’. At that time, I was playing basketball, so I was like, ‘OK, let me try to switch over and see if there is anything there’. So I never thought about it as pressure. I was like, ‘Let me have fun’.Over time, I got better. My parents said see if I can use it to pay for school and go off to college and university. When I got to college and university, I worked harder, and I got so much better. So I never thought of it as a sport like ‘Oh, there is going to be so much pressure, now I am at the Olympics, and I am racing against Usain Bolt’. I was like, ‘No, I am just going to go out there and have fun and represent my country the best I can’. That was kind of the goal, and it worked out. I was able to get three medals (at the Rio Games). I think after that, that’s when the pressure started to increase a bit.
You mention the need to have fun. What exactly is having fun for an athlete? So many athletes speak about it.Being part of a team is fun, especially at university. It is a big team: you have the sprinters, the distance runners, the field events, the throwers. So everybody is one big community. I was always part of a team when I played basketball or football. So it felt good. Even though track is an individual sport and you are racing by yourself, when you are part of that team, everyone is cheering you on. Everyone wants you to do well. I was always happy about that. I was always happy to go to practice and train and learn something new.You come from Canada and your career has coincided with the domination of the Americans and Jamaicans. How good did it feel to beat them and get that gold medal in the 200m Olympic final in Tokyo?Yeah, it felt amazing. It felt amazing to win because you work so hard and you train every single day for that one moment. You want to be one of the best in the world. For me, it was a tough schedule, because it was the pandemic. We tried to find ways to train, and everything was shut down in the world. So we trained four or five hours on the track and in the weight room, and you hoped it did not go to waste. You wanted to go out there and be at your best. So that was pretty cool and it was amazing to be part of something that special.Considering all the challenges, was that your sweetest win?Yeah, that was a good moment, but I think my favourite moment was when I got to race at home in Toronto. We had the Pan American Games in 2015, and I won in front of my family and my friends and my home crowd. It was the first time I ever won something big. I won the gold in the Tokyo Olympics, but because we were still in the middle of a pandemic, I did not get a chance to race in front of my family and my friends in the crowd. That was hard.
Which is the race you keep replaying in your head?I would say Tokyo. Another good moment was Paris — winning the (4x100m) relay with my teammates. That was a special moment because we got to do it together. And we’ve known each other since we were young, like, maybe 16, 17 years old. So three of us, we ran with each other for the last 10 years. So we always talked about, like, ‘Oh, we need to win. We need to win one before we all retire’. So that was a cool moment between myself, Aaron (Brown), and Brendon (Rodney). We were able to finally speak it into existence.On Usain Bolt, there is that iconic image of the two of you crossing the finish line in the 200m semifinals at Rio where he is seen grinning as he looks behind. What is your recollection of that moment?(Laughs) It wasn’t planned. Everyone always asked me, ‘was it planned?’ But it was not planned. My coach was like, ‘hey, we’re in the semifinals. We need to finish top two to make it to the finals. So try to go out hard because you have Usain in your heat, but make sure you save enough energy for the final.So I just remember, when I got to 160, 170 metres in the race, usually you look around to see if you can shut it down or not. Like see if anybody’s gonna pass you or ‘can I save some energy?’ So I just looked to the side and I saw Usain doing the same thing, and that kind of just happened. We just smiled at each other. But I didn’t know the moment was gonna be, like, that big. I didn’t know it was gonna be that special because I wasn’t even on social media at the time. I was just focusing on the race.And yeah, I couldn’t believe the photographers got those cool pictures. But I remember after the race, he was like, ‘What are you doing? What are you doing?’ He thought I was trying to run hard, but I was just, ‘No, I’m just making sure I save some energy for the final because I know I’ll have to race you in the final as well (laughs).You had a lifelong ambition of wanting to beat him that remained unfulfilled as he got injured before the London Worlds in 2017. And you were pulled out of the race in Monaco in 2017. What’s the relationship you have with Usain now?Yeah, no, we’re cool. We’re sponsored by the same (sportswear) brand so we see each other at events. We have a cool relationship. Obviously, he lives in Jamaica and I live now in Florida. So we don’t see each other unlike before. I think the last event we went to was maybe 2019 and we were in Germany. I can’t remember the exact event, but we just hung out, ate dinner, and it was just cool.He was retired, so he was just, ‘you know, keep doing what you’re doing. Keep trying to be the best’. And then I remember, even when I won in 2021, he sent me a message and said, ‘congratulations’. So it’s cool. I wouldn’t say we’re like friends, but we’re cordial.When you came on the scene, he had already achieved a lot in his career. What was competing against him like?I remember the first time I raced him, I think it was 2014 at the Commonwealth Games in Scotland, and I was like, ‘wow’. I watched him on tv during the London Games, but I hadn’t seen him in person. I didn’t even know he was that tall, and now I’m racing against him for the first time and we’re right beside each other. I’m in lane four, he’s in lane five. So it was like, ‘oh, wow’, kind of like a starstruck moment. Like you’re seeing somebody for the first time that you used to watch on tv. And then now I have to remember, ‘Okay, like I’m here now too. I’m a big athlete as well, so now I can’t be starstruck. I have to make sure that I’m racing as well’.So it was different (laughs) but I got over it. And then I raced him the next year in 2015, I felt a little bit more confident racing him after that.The last decade we have had runners like Asafa Powell, Tyson Gay, Yohan Blake, they were all top world class sprinters. But when it came to racing Bolt, they were always second or third behind him.Yeah (laughs)...So in that period when you know there is already somebody who is going to be king, how difficult is it for an athlete to train knowing that there is someone you might not be able to beat?I don’t think any athlete feels that way. I think we all feel like we can win. I mean even though it seems far out of reach sometimes. You know, when you see a guy like Usain like run the world record and run that fast, but we know as an athlete, you have to show up on that day. It doesn’t mean because you ran fast last week or the week before, that you can run fast again. You have to be consistent and show it every single time.So that was always how I felt, even when I raced Usain in 2016. I knew his world record was 9.5 (actually 9.58s), but when he ran that race, he only ran 9.8. So it’s like, ‘oh I know I can run that fast, I know I can do that. I’ve done it in training or done it in practice’. So I think that’s what you always think about. And your coach always gives you that confidence to say, ‘You can win, you can beat that person’. So yeah, I don’t think any athlete, when they race anyone, they think that they can’t beat them. They just feel like they want to just be better themselves.Every athlete aims or intends to run the perfect race. Has the definition of a perfect race for you changed from the time you were 21 to now?When I was younger, I always used to think, there is a perfect race. But now, as I’ve been more in the sport, I’m like, there is no perfect race. Like, you can always be better. I remember watching back my 100 metres at the Tokyo Olympics and I ran a personal best of 9.89. And I was watching it back with my coach and he was like, ‘Oh, you did so bad. Like this part of the race, from 10 to 30m, you did so bad. If you just did what you did in the first round, it would be a different race’. So you always go back and say, you could be better, and that’s the beauty of the sport. That’s what makes it so special, the running. Because you can always improve, even if it’s just by a little bit, you can always improve and run a personal best.You see it all the time. I’m sure even this weekend we’re going to see some good performances. Hopefully at the marathon, people are going to run a lot of personal bests. You have to just tell yourself in your mind that you can run better the next time.People may think sprinting is just about running fast. What technical part of training might people be surprised to know about?I think a lot of people don’t realize that there’s different phases of the race for sprinting. You have to have the top-end speed, you have to have a good start, you have to have a good transition in between the start and the top end. Every day you’re working on something new. Like every day you can’t work on your start. Every day you can’t work on the top-end speed.But you have to figure out ways of trying to focus on what you want to work on. And then, even in the weight room, depending on the athlete, some people lift heavy, some people lift light, but everyone’s body type is different. All those things are different for every athlete, but you have to be able to do some of those things to put the whole race together.Every elite sprinter wants that Olympic gold badly, and you won two of those. But finishing on the podium in every Olympic and World Championship final you competed in from 2015 to 2022. Where does that rank for you?I’ve been blessed to have a good team and have a good support system that helps me be able to accomplish those goals because it’s not easy, of course. I just try to work hard and try to make that happen. I mean it’s not any rocket science. It’s just trying to do all the hard work and hopefully at the end of the day, you did enough work for that outcome to come.I trained Monday to Friday, sometimes on Saturdays. And yeah, I just had to work hard to accomplish those goals. But I never even thought about that stat, about making the podium every time. I just tried to do my best every single time.Some of your Olympic medal wins have been rated as the ultimate clutch moments in sport. We have seen it in tennis with players like Novak Djokovic And Carlos Alcaraz rising from the dead. How do you define what a clutch is?I come from a basketball background so it’s like hitting the game winning shot. In my sport (athletics), my goal always is to get on the podium as much as I can because that’s the pinnacle of our sport. I always try to aim for that but you take it one round at a time…try to get through the heats, then the semifinals, then you worry about the finals and then try to just leave it all out there and get on the podium. I try not to rush it and be patient and hopefully it just comes to me. But it’s definitely not something that I think about or try to put pressure on myself. I just listen to my coach, to my team and try to take it one race at a time.Can you train to be clutch?I don’t think so. You do have to train hard because your competitors are training. When your coach tells you to do something or you feel like in your gut that ‘I need to be doing this or doing that’, you just have to go with it. I always try to do the best and take care of my body so that I can have those clutch moments. But it’s not going to work out every time. But I try my best to do that.You are 31 right now and the 2028 LA Olympics is just over two years away. You will be competing against the young guns like Noah Lyles, Oblique Seville and Kishane Thompson…I said I wanted to do one more Olympics. So LA 2028 will feel close to home for me because it’s close to Canada. Also, I went to school in Los Angeles which was right down the street from where the main stadium is going to be. So that’s going to feel like a ‘home Games’ for me as I know a lot of people there. I know I’m an older athlete now compared to the younger guys like Noah and Kishane but I want to try to do one more Olympics and try to do the best of my abilities.Sports science has advanced a lot and it has enabled athletes across disciplines to have a long career. Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi are still going strong. How is it helping you in trying to remain competitive and prolong your career?That has played a big role especially with your recovery. As I’ve got older now, you get more sore and feel fatigued but a lot of these new machines have helped me continue my training and make sure that I stay on track and that I’m able to go to train the next day. Now I can’t say ‘Oh coach, I don’t feel I can go today. My body hurts’. Now, I can keep going. My therapist always likes talking about the stuff we need to buy. I leave it up to them. I just say, ‘I’ll try it and see how it feels’. For example, one of the machines that my therapist just got helps you get out the lactic acid from your body. Everything is just evolving compared to when I first started 10-11 years ago during my first Olympics. It’s incredible how much it’s helped me keep going for a long time.Likely to be very popular with the women sprinters at LA 2028, looking at the athletics schedule. The women’s 100m heats, semis and final will all be held on the same day for the first time…Yeah, I think they have three rounds. They’ll probably have to figure that out. I feel sorry for them.On sports science evolving, despite all the developments, do you think Bolt’s 100m record will be broken?I don’t know. We’ll see. You’d think so because the spikes, technology, and tracks have evolved. We just have to wait and see.You ran your first track meet with borrowed spikes and basketball shorts. Have you kept them as memorabilia, and how much do you think they might fetch at an auction?Yeah, I still have them somewhere in my parents’ house. I don’t know how much they’d go for. Sometimes I auction off the spikes I wear now for my foundation. These might go for about US$500. Your mom is from Trinidad and your dad from Barbados, two decorated West Indies islands. Has that sparked interest in cricket?Yeah. When I visited my dad in Barbados as a kid, maybe 9 or 10, we played a lot of cricket. I haven’t played since, but I love it. I like to bat, not bowl. I like to hit sixes.There’s also a lot of debate about the Enhanced Games. What are your views?I don’t have much information. I hear mixed reviews — people say they can compete where it’s a clean games, but I don’t know the exact instructions. The first one is supposed to be in May this year. It’s weird because I haven’t talked to any athletes about it. When it happens the first time, I’ll know more. I read what you guys read online. Some people can take drugs and some don’t have to, so I don’t know the exact thing. I don’t really have a strong opinion.Sprinters are always under the spotlight with dope testing. How annoying is it when you’re celebrating a medal and then dragged for testing, especially with the whereabouts clause?It’s tough. You want a clean sport and hope your competitors are clean, but not everybody is. I can only speak for myself that when I line up, I’m a clean athlete. That’s why I probably won’t take part in the Enhanced Games, because of people saying you have to take drugs for it. I’m focused on the World Championship next year in Beijing and then the 2028 Olympics. I try to focus on myself and hope my competitors are clean.People talk about “being in the zone.” Do you experience it, and can you create the perfect conditions for it?I listen to music and get a good night’s sleep. On race day, I take my mind off the race, — watch Netflix, follow my normal routine, do a shake-out in the morning, and eat breakfast. I try to nap because races are often late. I see my coach and physio, and two-three hours before we talk about the game plan. Taking my mind off the race helps me get into the zone.How do you see it going once you retire?I do a lot of work with my foundation. We give out scholarships every year. I’ve also thought about acting. I’m working on a kids’ TV show back home.You spoke about training with your coach and not questioning him. How does that compare to parenting?Parenting is tough. My kids (daughter and a son) are young, so you need a lot of patience, they cry and yell a lot. I’ve gotten better over the years. At first, I thought it would be a tough challenge, but now I balance it better and try to figure out what they like and what keeps them from crying.Do you want them to take up a sport?Yeah, I think so. They come to a lot of championships. They know what I do and have seen me run. But I don’t think they want to run right now. They don’t really like running, but my daughter likes gymnastics. We’ll see in the future.
