'I was probably the slowest on my team': B.C. sprinter's journey to Olympic gold

Jerome Blake can now call himself an Olympic gold medalist. But the 28-year-old admits that the thought of standing atop the podium at one point seemed more like a pipe dream.

“Honestly, I wasn’t the best at this,” said Blake, who was born in Jamaica. “I was probably the slowest on my team.”

Blake moved to Kelowna to live with his mother in 2013. He joined the local track club, where his natural gifts started to become unleashed.

“I really took the training seriously,” Blake told CTV News via Zoom from Paris. “Then really decided this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to train hard because I want to run faster and that’s when it really took over and I think for my whole high school career, I didn’t lose a single race.”

As Blake rose up the running ranks, he moved to Coquitlam to train with the Coquitlam Cheetahs track and field club.

“He brought a lot of energy to the track and to practice,” said Nicholas Ayin, the club’s current president and a former training partner of Blake.

“When it came down to racing at a meet, he was virtually untouchable.”

It wasn’t long until Blake started competing against the best in the world. At the Tokyo 2020 games, his team captured 4 x 100 Olympic silver. They went on to claim gold at the 2022 World Championships, but the sport's biggest prize remained on the team’s mind.

“All four of us had a conversation, we just said, ‘We need to win in Paris,'” said Blake.

Despite entering the final as a heavy underdog, Canada shocked the running world by capturing the country’s first gold in the event since 1996. Blake says after race he shared a special moment with Bruny Surin, a member of the '96 team.

“I seen Bruny in the crowd and as I went over and started hugging Bruny, he said, ‘I told you guys you can do that, just believe, it’s family, and, you know, it’s possible.' I’m like, 'Oh man this is so surreal,'” said Blake. “The whole relay is not a one-person effort. It was a four person effort coming together to create something that everyone counted us out but us.”

Blake ran his leg in a time slightly less than nine seconds. Canada finished the games with its most gold (nine) and total medals (27) ever in a non-boycotted summer games.