Andre De Grasse eyes Olympic medal ahead of Canadian trials

By Lori Ewing, The Canadian Press

When Andre De Grasse lines up against the world's fastest men at the Rio Olympics, it will be the punctuation mark on a season that was written in countless training runs down the track at a small college in Arizona.

The Canadian sprint star raised some eyebrows when he upended his training environment just six months out from the Rio Olympics.

The 21-year-old swapped what was essentially a two-man training group at the University of Southern California to become just one of more than 100 world-class athletes from 30 countries working with the Altis training centre in Phoenix.

Training against the best in the world on a daily basis, he said, will stand him in good stead when he lines up in Rio.

"Before it was just me and my training partner BeeJay [Lee, his USC teammate]," De Grasse said. "But we both came here, and the atmosphere. . . we have guys who are just as fast as us, that push us every day.

"It's really good for us competitively because before you didn't really know where you were at, in practice. But now you can tell, if you're with your training partner or you're near him doing a rep, you know you're in pretty good shape."

Headlines Canadian Olympic trials

The Markham, Ont., sprinter will be the headliner at this week's Canadian Olympic trials in Edmonton, and he has his eyes on a medal at the Rio Olympics.

He'll also be one of about a dozen Altis athletes, including sprinter Justyn Warner and long jumper Christabel Nettey, competing in Edmonton.

Paradise Valley Community College, the Altis training base, sits in the shadow of Camelback Mountain in a sleepy Phoenix neighbourhood. 

The athletes arrive in waves — smaller groups make for more effective coaching. They paint a global mosaic in their various national team gear, from Great Britain, India, Japan, Australia, Saint Lucia, Samoa, and Canada.

Damian Warner, Canada's world silver medallist in the decathlon, travelled to Phoenix several times this season to work with Altis.

"The main thing I like about this program is just the atmosphere, and the coaches," Warner said during a break between sessions.

"The atmosphere is a little different from what I'm used to. I can pole vault and I'm pole vaulting with a guy [Steve Lewis] who is the British record-holder. Then I look over and there's the world record-holder in the hurdles, Aries Merritt [of the U.S.]. It's just kind of a cool atmosphere, and everybody here is focusing on their own goals, and focusing on Rio, and you can tell, and you can feed off that energy."

Altis provides high-level training

There were 17 Altis athletes, including five medallists, at last summer's world championships in Beijing.

Four-time world shot put champion John Godina is the program's founder and CEO. It's staff of 35 coaches, therapists and staff members includes Canadian sprint coaches Stuart McMillan and Kevin Tyler.

Costs to train with Altis, which Tyler said is unique in the sport, are $15,000 US annually for professional athletes to a portion of that for developing athletes. Altis also provides scholarships, and Tyler said the long-term objective "is to have every athlete as a scholarship athlete, up until they're professional."

Besides the training and virtually unlimited access to therapy, athletes attend talks on topics such as nutrition, sleep, supplements, and being a professional.

Dan Pfaff, who guided Donovan Bailey to Olympic gold, said the program "embraces high performance, and is welcoming, and about education, teaching, and relationships."

Every move carefully monitored

De Grasse doesn't step on the track until he's been worked over on the trainer's table. In the weight room later, every move is carefully monitored.

McMillan, a Calgary native who has guided over 60 Olympians in six Games — both summer and winter — is De Grasse's coach, and while the sprint star has been on a steep learning curve since arriving in Phoenix, he's an avid learner.

"There's a reason why he's done so well, you don't do that well by joking around and just showing up and putting the work in, you actually have to study," said the cerebral coach. "We speak a lot about doing everything with intention. Andre does a really good job of when he's moving or when he's doing something that he deems as important, he's intentional with it. Whether that's a warmup stride, or if it's a lift, whatever, if he understands the reason for it, he's attentive or intentional."

Coming off a gruelling college season that saw him race 54 times, De Grasse heads into Edmonton fresh and healthy. He's hoping to run a sub-10 in the 100 metres, and sub-20 in the 200, two marks he hasn't hit this season.

He'll be pushed by Aaron Brown, who recently became just the second Canadian in nearly two decades to run a sub-10 100 metres.