Andre De Grasse watched Aaron Brown explode out of the blocks and round the corner with blazing speed.
Brown passed the baton to Jerome Blake, who sprinted down Lane 9 before Brendon Rodney kept the pace as he charged toward Canada’s anchor at Stade de France.
"I've never seen those three guys ever run like that,” De Grasse said. “They ran the race of their life.”
De Grasse grabbed the final handoff — and the rest was history. While nursing a hamstring injury, the star sprinter powered the underdog Canadian men’s 4x100-metre relay team across the finish line for an unexpected gold medal on Aug. 9 at the Paris Olympics.
“Those guys were in control of the race,” coach Glenroy Gilbert said. “And once you put the stick in Andre’s hands … it’s a no-brainer.
“There's no better guy with ice water in his veins to take the stick at the end.”
The relay squad of Brown, Blake, Rodney and De Grasse ran away with The Canadian Press team of the year award for 2024 on Saturday.
De Grasse tied swimmer Penny Oleksiak as Canada’s most decorated Olympian with seven medals. The team’s triumph also redeemed disappointing individual showings as all four sprinters failed to reach finals in Paris.
They received 37 of 53 votes from writers, broadcasters and editors across the country.
“Out of nowhere, the Canadian men's 4x100-metre relay team put together one of the most electrifying and stunning moments of any Olympic Games,” said Todd Saelhof, sports editor at Postmedia Calgary.
The 1996 men’s relay team headlined by Donovan Bailey is the only other track team to earn the honour since the award’s inception in 1966.
Team Rachel Homan finished second with seven votes after winning both the Canadian and world curling championships. The Edmonton Oilers, who lost in the Stanley Cup final, and Olympic silver medal beach volleyball duo of Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson tied for third at three votes.
“This relay team wasn't even expected to reach the podium,” said CBC Sports senior producer Tony Care. “This gold medal was the biggest moment of the Paris Olympics.”
Not only did none of the sprinters reach individual finals, they also barely squeaked into the relay final with the slowest qualifying time.
Gilbert remembers the situation looking “pretty dire” for the team.
“Despondent and kind of down” is how Brown described the group’s morale.
A review of the heat with biomechanist Dana Way helped the Canadians realize a result was possible without their best legs, as long as their exchanges were on point.
Then, standing outside the call room where teams huddle for a final prayer, Brown rallied his running mates with an impromptu speech that still resonates months after winning gold.
“This is our shot, we can do this,” Brown said of his message. “Really emphasize that we can do it despite the fact that nobody is checking for us, nobody believes we can do it.”
Brown also hammered home that it could be their swan song after years of success as a quartet.
De Grasse, Rodney and Brown won bronze at the Rio 2016 Games before Blake joined to claim silver — upgraded from bronze — at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. They followed up with world championship gold in Eugene, Ore., in 2022.
At the relay final in Paris, Blake was the youngest of the bunch at 28. De Grasse was 29, while Rodney and Brown were 32 — hardly young guns in a sport typically dominated by youth.
“Who knows if everybody's going to be running in L.A. (in 2028)?” De Grasse recalled Brown saying. “Just basically giving that speech of, 'we're gonna go out there and shock the world … let's go out here and trust one another and get off that mark and run like your life's depending on it.'
“That pumped me up, that put me in a different mindset, and it gave me that motivation we needed to get the job done."
After the win, a video of American sprint star Noah Lyles repeatedly responding “Who?” to questions about a rivalry with Canada earlier that year resurfaced and went viral. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau even referred to it in a social media post.
Blake insists they’d forgotten all about that until they celebrated on the track with Canadian flags wrapped around their arms.
“That's when somebody in the stadium, a Canadian fan, was like ‘What now? Canada who?” said Blake, who repeated those words to reporters after the race. “That's when I started yelling that.”
Looking ahead, Brown, Blake, Rodney and De Grasse all aspire to continue sprinting for another four years and compete in the 2028 Games, but they acknowledge that a lot can change in that time.
For now, they’re focused on running it back at next year’s world championships in Tokyo.
And after striking gold in Paris, they don’t expect anyone to ask who Canada is in 2025.
“The world’s definitely gonna have a target on us, a big one,” Rodney said. “We just got to come with our A game. It's always hard to be motivated after the Olympics, but the motivation is that you're now the target.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 28, 2024.
Daniel Rainbird, The Canadian Press