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Jerome Blake on Skipping Practice, a Broken Back and Olympic 4x100m Relay Gold
In the Olympic 4x100m final in Paris, Canada was drawn in lane 9. Aaron Brown came around the first bend at full speed and reached for Jerome Blake's hand, and missed. He missed again. It took several tries before the baton was in Blake's grip, in the biggest race of his life, with the rest of the field already moving. Blake didn't flinch. "When you've drilled that thing over and over for so long, you get comfortable," he told David Stark. "If something goes wrong, you never panic, you just stay composed." Minutes later, Canada were Olympic champions.
What makes the story better is how Blake got there. A few years earlier he was a talented sprinter who, by his own admission, barely trained.
Film sets, modelling shoots and half-hearted practice
Blake's running started in Jamaica, where his high school coach gave him a line he still repeats. Later, living in Vancouver, he was juggling sprinting with a busy career in film and modelling, and the track usually lost. "Three or four days a week I'd be in a film or model set," he said. When he did show up, he was honest about the effort: "I'll run the first two really, really hard and after that, man, I'm chilling."
Talent carried him a long way anyway. He made Canada's team for the 2019 World Championships in Doha. Then a message changed everything: a Nike rep reached out and asked whether he had an agent.
Florida, the Nike group, and the first real training block
In September 2020, in the middle of COVID, Blake moved to Clermont, Florida, to train full-time with coach Dennis Mitchell and the Nike group. For the first time, he was training every day beside some of the fastest people on earth, and he found out quickly how far behind he was. "I realized these dudes are no slouch," he said. "I'm in a bad situation. I gotta figure this out quickly."
It wasn't pretty at first. He admitted calling a friend and saying he wanted to quit track, "some days." He had also never lifted seriously. Within months that changed: "By March, I was back squatting 450. It was like going through puberty."
Running a season on a broken back
The jump in load came with a cost. In 2021, Blake had two fractures in his lumbar spine, and he ran through them. "I had two fractures in my lumbar spine," he said. "I was completely messed up, still ran with it for the entire season." He described "living on the table," getting treatment constantly just to compete, and still ran 10.0 in the 100m and 20.0 in the 200m that year. Canada won Olympic bronze in the 4x100m in Tokyo.
He's clear there are no lingering issues now, and the lesson he took from it is about technique, not toughness: learn to lift properly, and respect how fast strength gains can outpace what your body is ready for.
Aggressive but relaxed: how Blake thinks about speed
Blake spends a lot of the conversation on the balance every sprinter chases, attacking the ground hard while staying loose enough not to waste energy. "If you learn to apply force properly, it's like a rubber ball," he explained. "You get all the force back." It's not one technique for everyone, either: on his current team, no two athletes run the same program, and he still lifts as close as two days out from a race.
Four friends, lane 9, and an appeal
The Paris relay worked, Blake says, because the four of them (Aaron Brown, Andre De Grasse, Brendon Rodney and Blake) actually like each other. "It's a cool thing because we're all friends, we all get along, we kind of all have the same mindset." Before the final they joked that they'd leave with a medal, colour unknown, then locked in on leaving Paris with gold.
After the baton finally reached him, the race went quiet in his head. "I couldn't feel the race anymore," he said. "It felt like we weren't even a part of the race." Across the line, he sat on the track and cried.
Then came the twist. An appeal was lodged over the exchange. "I ran over to the guys. I was like, yo, they're appealing," Blake remembered. Officials reviewed the footage from several camera angles and dismissed it. The gold stood.
Selfish, on purpose
Blake doesn't sugar-coat what it cost. He has missed birthdays, weddings and family events. "You have to be selfish," he said. "You have to be self first and everybody else second." At 29 when this was recorded, he felt he was only getting started, with seven or eight more years in him.
His advice to young athletes goes back to that coach in Jamaica: "Trust it, believe it, see it and go after it."
Key takeaways
Rehearse until pressure feels normal. Blake stayed calm through a botched exchange in an Olympic final because the handoff was drilled into him.
Showing up beats talent. Blake's biggest jump came when he stopped skipping sessions and trained full-time.
Strength builds speed, but build it carefully. A fast rise to a 450 lb squat came before two lumbar fractures. Technique matters.
Chemistry is a performance tool. Four friends with the same mindset made a relay team that could survive chaos.
Sacrifice is part of the deal. Missed weddings and birthdays were the price of Olympic gold.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Jerome Blake?
Jerome Blake is a Canadian sprinter who won Olympic gold in the men's 4x100m relay at Paris 2024 with Aaron Brown, Andre De Grasse and Brendon Rodney. He also won relay bronze in Tokyo and works in film and modelling.
What happened in Canada's 4x100m relay final at Paris 2024?
Running from lane 9, Canada won gold despite a difficult first exchange between Aaron Brown and Jerome Blake. An appeal was filed over the handoff and dismissed after officials reviewed the video.
How did Jerome Blake start weight training?
He had never lifted seriously until he moved to Florida in 2020 to train with Dennis Mitchell's Nike group. By the following March he was back squatting 450 lb.
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