Canada's Andre De Grasse earns second Pan Am gold medal in record time

Coming into the 2015 Pan Am Games, Andre De Grasse was hardly a household name for many Canadians. In fact many weren’t even sure how to correctly say his name.

“A lot of people before this didn’t know how to pronounce my last name, they used to say De Grassi, but now I think everybody knows my name is (pronounced De Grass),” said De Grasse. “It feels really good that people know my name and I’m making an impact in the track and field world.”

That would be an understatement.

On Friday, De Grasse won his second gold medal of the Pan Am Games with a stunning victory in the men’s 200-metre. He finished with a time of 19.88, setting a Pan Am and Canadian record in the process. The 20-year-old also became the first Canadian to run the 200-metres with a sub-20 second time.

“It feels amazing,” said De Grasse after the race. “The first Canadian to run under sub-20 seconds, it doesn’t get any better than this. It just feels like an unreal moment right now.”

At first, he wasn’t even sure he had won the race since it was a tight finish with Jamaica’s Rasheed Dwyer (19.90), who won silver, and Panama’s Edward Alonzo, who claimed the bronze.

“I didn’t know but I knew it was close,” said De Grasse of the finish. “I saw Jamaica’s Rasheed Dwyer; we were both leaning at the line and I looked to my left and I was just waiting for the screen (on the scoreboard) to pop-up to see who won.”

The Markham native also claimed gold in the men’s 100-metres on Wednesday night with a time of 10.05. On Thursday during the qualifying for the 200, De Grasse looked exhausted after his final run of the night. He said he had been up late on Wednesday for the medal ceremony and media rounds, but didn’t want to use that as an excuse.

“(Thursday) he was barely alive,” said De Grasse’s personal coach Caryl Smith Gilbert, who coaches De Grasse at the University of Southern California. “So to see him recover and comeback out in lane eight – with no one to see – it was a great race.

“There’s no telling what he could have done if he had been on the inside of somebody where he could see. It’s probably the most excited I’ve been.”

Smith Gilbert says she spends a lot of time causing distractions for her sprinters at USC. That means putting them in unfavorable conditions - like lane eight or lane one – where the runner has difficulty gauging the rest of the field.

“He’s used to the distractions because I try to create as many as I can,” said Smith Gilbert. “We have false starts and all kinds of stuff in practice.

“I told him, ‘You’ll never be able to be a double Pan Am champion in Toronto again on your clock. It won’t happen. So you better take advantage of the time and have fun and relax.' ”

Canada ran an alternate in De Grasse’s spot for the men’s 4x100 relay semifinal on Friday night, but athletics head coach Peter Eriksson said he planned to run De Grasse in the final on Saturday – barring anything unforeseen.

In total, De Grasse ran six times over the course of four days in his two events, taking a huge toll on his body and lessoning his recovery time as opposed to the rest of the 200 field, who didn’t run the 100-metre race.

Smith Gilbert said, unlike her team in the NCAA, she allowed De Grasse to decide how many events he wanted to race. And with the Games being in his backyard, De Grasse wanted to run as many as he could.

She did, however, put her foot down for the upcoming world championships where she says he’ll only run the 100-meter and the 4x100 relay event.

A long-time coach on the NCAA circuit training elite-level athletes Gilbert has seen her share of impressive results. And De Grasse’s performance, for her, was right up there on the list of things she seen her young charge do.

“This impressed me the most – the 200,” she said. “He could have easily, because of the way his body was feeling … he could have easily just said, ‘I’ll get the bronze.’

“He just doesn’t have that. He’s a fighter and you can’t coach that, that’s natural. He’s a great kid.”