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Canada’s Justyn Warner is one of the few who could go from track star to gridiron great

Andrew Bucholtz

Given the obsession with football players' speed, it's not surprising that many fans often look at track sprinters and think "Hey, these guys could help us out!" However, the results of such strategies are decidedly mixed; for every Jim Thorpe, who went from Olympic decathlete to early NFL star, and every "Bullet" Bob Hayes, the American Olympic sprinter who became a Hall of Fame receiver with the NFL's Dallas Cowboys, there have been plenty of track-to-gridiron washouts, including disgraced Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson. Johnson briefly set a world record in the 100-metre-dash at the 1988 Olympics before being disqualified thanks to testing positive for steroids, but all his speed didn't help him as a football player; he reportedly caught just one of 21 punts sent his way in a tryout with the CFL's Toronto Argonauts. As Sean Fitz-Gerald writes, though, 25-year-old sprinter Justyn Warner, the only Canadian to qualify for the Olympics in the men's 100-metre dash this year and perhaps the most promising of the current crop of Canadian sprinters, might just have the potential to turn his speed into a gridiron asset thanks to his football experience:

Warner was a star tailback with his Toronto-area high school team and carries a running back's frame, at 5-foot-8, 174 pounds. He knows he would have to put on weight to play football again, but his previous experience on the field might make him a better candidate than those who only had experience on the track.

"Imagine Usain Bolt's running down a straightaway, and then all of the sudden he has to put a foot in the ground and change direction 90 degrees," Toronto Argonauts defensive end Ricky Foley said. "You feel like he would just tear every single muscle in his body, right? But for a football player, you literally do that — you are going as fast as you can and you do put your foot in the ground and change direction."

Foley, 30, made the switch to football after competing in decathlon, at York University.

"The hardest thing with track guys is always running up high, up tall," Foley said. "When you play football, you've got to be down low, because you're being hit, someone's trying to tackle you. If you run too high, like you would in track in 100 metres, you become an easy target for defenders."

Warner might seem on the small side for a football player to some, but lots of similarly-sized players have been very successful in the CFL, especially as running backs, slotbacks and kick returners. Some past examples include Charles Roberts (5'6'', 177 pounds) and Stefan Logan (5'6'', 180 pounds), and current Argonauts star Andre Durie isn't much bigger (5'9'', 188 pounds). If he can play, his size won't keep him out, and his speed and presumable non-import status would certainly make him an interesting option for CFL teams to consider. The question is if he'd want to pursue football and if he'd have more to bring to the table than just his raw speed.

On the first front, Warner sounded at least somewhat intrigued by the idea of trying to make the CFL in his interview with Fitz-Gerald, but he says he's focused on track for now and may consider other options as well, including bobsleigh (where he could potentially team up with former CFL star Jesse Lumsden). If he does elect to try football, though, he won't necessarily automatically succeed; every year, there's plenty of hype around guys with blazing speed, but many of them never make it past training camp. As CFL types like Wally Buono and Jermaine Copeland point out in Fitz-Gerald's piece, there's a vast difference between being able to run fast in a straight line on a track and combining that speed with the agility, ability to quickly make direction changes, football instincts and hands required for CFL success. Warner's previous football experience would make him a better bet than most sprinters, but there's a big jump between high-school football and the CFL, and the length of time since he's been on the gridiron would require an adjustment too. Still, if he does decide to pursue football, he'd likely draw plenty of CFL interest, and he could very well turn into as big a star on the gridiron as he is on the track.