Andre De Grasse picks up Olympic bronze in 100m final

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The Canadian from Markham, Ont. finished in a personal best time of 9.89, nine tenths of a second behind Italy’s Marcell Jacobs

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Scott Stinson Andre De Grasse of Team Canada celebrates after winning the bronze medal in the Men’s 100m Final on day nine of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at Olympic Stadium on August 01, 2021 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by Matthias Hangst/Getty Images) Article content

TOKYO — Canada’s Andre De Grasse won the bronze medal in the men’s 100 metres at Tokyo 2020, a repeat of his performance in the same race in Rio 2016.

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De Grasse finished with a personal best time of 9.89. Italian Lamont Marcell Jacobs won the gold in 9.80, and Fred Kerley of the United States won silver in 9.84.

The 26-year-old from Markham, Ont. was the fastest qualifier in Saturday’s 100m heats, with a 9.91 that was one-hundredth of a second off his personal best.

“For me, this was an amazing moment. I never thought we’d be here last year, so just grateful to be here in Tokyo and get back on the podium,” De Grasse told CBC.

“It’s amazing and I can’t wait for the next couple nights for the 200 metres”

The semi-finals on Sunday night did not go nearly as well for De Grasse. He didn’t have his best start in what was the first of three semis, but gained ground to finish second at 9.98 and automatically qualify for the final. That was still a strong time through the second semi-final, but the third was blazing fast, with four runners going 9.90 or faster, led by China’s Su Bingtian at 9.83, followed by American Ronnie Baker just two thousandths of a second behind. The rush of fast times meant De Grasse was in the outside lane for the final, far from an ideal starting position. His result was not the only surprise of the semi-finals: American Trayvon Bromell, who had run the fastest time of the season so far at 9.77, clocked a 10.00 and was shut out of the final. Yohan Blake, the Jamaican who was the silver medallist at London 2012 and is a former world champion, also did not progress to the main event.

Article content Lamont Marcell Jacobs of Team Italy wins the Men’s 100m Final on day nine of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at Olympic Stadium on August 01, 2021 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by Matthias Hangst/Getty Images)

De Grasse said in a June interview with Postmedia that getting in the right lane for the final would be a crucial part of the competition. The semi-finals, he said, “are kind of the hardest part of the whole thing, I feel like, because everybody’s going to be treating it as a finals and making sure that they get through.” His semi-final race on Sunday was restarted after Great Britain’s Reece Prescod was disqualified for a false start. There was then a delay of more than seven minutes to fix what was described in the stadium as a malfunction with the timing system. The runners waited on the track while the problem was addressed.

De Grasse became a world-class sprint star at Rio 2016, where he was the first Canadian to ever win medals in all three sprint events at an Olympics. He won bronze in the 100m, silver in the 200m, and anchored the 4x100m relay team to a bronze in a Canadian record time.