“It’s still surreal. Just looking at that medal, I honestly can’t believe it.”
For Kelowna’s newest Olympic hero, winning gold in the men’s 4x100 relay in Paris Friday was the culmination of years of hard work and a perfectly executed game plan.
Jerome Blake, 28, along with teammates Aaron Brown, Brendon Rodney and Andre De Grasse won gold in a time of 37.50 seconds.
Blake is just the second Kelowna male to win an Olympic gold medal, joining Blair Horn who won gold as part of the men’s rowing eights in the 1984 games in Los Angeles.
“The game plan was to win but for us, it was to execute a good race, get the baton around the track and we knew all we needed to do was to be clean,” said Blake Tuesday from Paris where he has been playing tourist since the closing ceremonies.
The men were considered longshots to win a medal, nevermind gold, after barely qualifying out of their heat, and coming in with the slowest time of the eight teams in the final.
But Blake says those numbers don’t tell the whole story.
“If you really go back and look at the race in our heat, we were winning…but Andre didn’t get off the mark well because he had something that was bugging him, but we just had to make sure we would qualify.
“Those guys came back late the night before after running their semi finals in the 200. I was told to run really fast to set the tone so those guys would be good.”
Despite the finish, Blake says they knew they had the potential to win if they executed properly.
Being somewhat on an island by themselves in the outside lane away from the congestion in the middle lanes was a blessing.
“Being on the outside lane was an advantage because all we had to do was run our own race and run away from everybody else instead of being in the middle of the race and being in the mess.
“The further you are away from there it’s easier for you to execute a good race.”
Individually, the team wasn’t the fastest on the track. They were sixth after the first leg and fourth after the second when Blake handed the baton to Rodney after a blistering 8.89 second 100 metre.
They were third when De Grasse took the baton and, despite having the fourth fastest leg, it was enough for him to reel in Japan and Italy and hold off Great Britain and South Africa.
“It’s one of those things where you can’t make a mistake,” said Blake describing the nuance of the relay.
“I have a very hard job because I have to receive and pass the baton and also try and set the tone.
“The starter does their job then I have to set the tone of the race because if I don’t do a good job from the second leg, it’s hard to get back into the race.
“In a wider turn race (lane 9) if those guys had passed us one the inside the race would have been over. It wouldn’t matter what Andre did, he would never catch up.”
Blake still has race commitments before he is able to come home. As a Nike athlete, he is obligated to run in a certain number of meets each year so he’s not expecting to return to Kelowna until sometime next month.
As for the future, Blake knows he still has a lot of racing left in him and expects to be back to help Canada defend its gold medal in Los Angeles in 2028.
As for the rest of the team, he doesn’t think the band is going anywhere, but that is still four years out.
“Aaron says he's going until 28, Brendon says he'll stick around and me, I'm the youngest one on the team, I'm just 28 so I'm with you all.
Rodney and Brown will both be 36 when Los Angeles rolls around while De Grasse will be 33.
“Everyone is excited but right now we'll just celebrate this win and that's something to talk about as the years go on.
"You have to relish in the moment because this is very big. I didn't realize how big until we started getting all these phone calls...it was insane."
