The 100-metre dash is simple: crack of the starter’s pistol, 10 seconds of all-out effort, first one across the line wins. The equipment is simple, and so is the title the winner walks away with—fastest man or woman on Earth.
On the men’s side, our stock image of the elite-level competitor is simple, too: about six feet of NFL running back–grade musculature, packed particularly into the thigh. And when an athlete bucks that trend, they usually have the decency to provide us with a simple explanation: Usain Bolt—five inches too tall and relatively lean—takes a stride in the same amount of time as his competitors but needs roughly one less to cover 100 metres. He tends to win by roughly one stride. Simple.
But then Andre De Grasse had to come along and complicate things.
“Initially [what struck me about De Grasse] was his unassuming stature,” says David Frost, assistant professor in the faculty of kinesiology and physical education at the University of Toronto. “He’s a little guy, not extremely muscular. And so just seeing him being able to compete with these other specimens was pretty remarkable.”
Even more remarkable is the fact that De Grasse has a legitimate shot at the podium in Rio—the potential to become Canada’s first Olympic medalist in the short sprints since Donovan Bailey in 1996.
So, what is it about the Markham, Ont.-born sprinter’s physical makeup and processes that make him so fast? The answer isn’t exactly simple, but here’s a simplification.
Speed is a matter of force. The more force you can drive through your feet and into the ground, the faster you can propel your body. Hit the ground a bunch of times in rapid succession with enough force aimed in the right direction and you’ll propel yourself forward 100 metres in less than 10 seconds.
A lot goes into generating that kind of power—from having the muscle to create it in the first place to having a mindset that allows you to push past physical limitations—and to sprint at the Olympic level you have to do all of it better than 99.9999 (nines trailing off into infinity) percent of people. But even among the tiny fraction of a percentage of humanity that can qualify for an Olympic heat, there’s something Andre De Grasse does exceptionally well.
“He’s got just amazing natural timing,” says Stuart McMillan, De Grasse’s coach.
Timing in this context is easier to understand if you think of it as coordination. Transferring force from your muscles to the ground isn’t something you do in a single movement—it takes dozens. The better coordinated those movements are, the smoother and more efficient the transfer of force to the ground.
“If we’re able to sequence things a little bit better, it means that one muscle is helping out another just a little bit more,” says Frost. “And so it allows our muscles to work a bit easier or—and maybe in Andre’s case—a little bit better overall.”
The perfect timing of those reflexive movements also shortens the gap between strides.
“He gets off the ground really quickly,” McMillan says before zeroing in on a portion of De Grasse’s stride. “The knee travels underneath his hip and moves posteriorly as the foot travels on the ground, and that stretch reflex comes pretty quick in that process, so he gets off the ground really quick.
“He just times things up really well,” McMillan continues. “So he’s able to strike the ground in the right place with a ton of force and get off really quickly. And that’s everything to do with speed is those three things: how hard you hit the ground, how fast you get off the ground and in which direction you’re pushing.”
Simple, right?
For more Andre De Grasse, check out Evan Rosser’s profile of him from Sportsnet magazine.