A Cinderella story: Upstart Ottawa sprinter gets his Olympic moment

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In his first attempt to make the track team at École secondaire publique Louis Riel, Eliezer Adjibi didn’t make the cut.

“I was kind of slow,” he says.

Fast forward to late June, when Adjibi lost in a photo finish to Canadian sprinting legend Andre DeGrasse in the national 100-metre final.

That narrow second-place finish, coupled with breaking the 10-second barrier and a string of other blistering times earlier this year, have taken the upstart 23-year-old University of Ottawa mechanical engineering student all the way to the Paris Olympics as part of Canada’s 4×100-metre relay team.

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There is still some jockeying for positions among the six candidates eligible to run for Canada in Paris, and Athletics Canada head coach Glenroy Gilbert will make the ultimate decisions before the relay competition begins on Aug. 8.

“Even though this was our plan when the season started, it’s still surreal. It’s the perfect Cinderella story,” says Lyndon George, Adjibi’s coach. “From not being able to make his high school relay team to making it to the highest level, it’s almost like it’s not supposed to happen, the way he came into the sport.”

It is, as George says, remarkably unique.

In Grade 10, Adjibi was only too happy to be playing soccer with the Cumberland Cobras when a friend suggested he give track a try.

It was a humbling beginning.

“I tried out, but there were too many people in the 100 metres and I was too slow,” he says. “So I just did the high jump. There was less competition. The whole point then was just to go to OFSAA (the Ontario high school championships), to be with my friends.”

Adjibi laughs at comparisons to Michael Jordan, who was famously cut from his high school basketball team before going on to win six National Basketball Association titles and five NBA most valuable player awards.

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Like Jordan, Adjibi stuck with it, receiving encouragement and early guidance from Louis Riel Dome coach Lotfi Khaida, who competed in the long jump for Algeria in the 1988 and 1992 Olympics.

In Grade 11, Adjibi made it to the 100-metre final at OFSAA, but finished last in that race with a time of 11.33 seconds.

The big breakthrough came the following summer, when Adjibi began working with George, a coach with CANI (Constant and Never Ending Improvement Athletics).

“He told me to give him one year of my life and see how far I could go in the sport,” says Adjibi, who won bronze medals at OFSAA in the 100 and 200 metres in Grade 12. “I went from 11.1 to 10.5. I started lifting weights. I had to get stronger. I grew into my body. The coaches believed in me.”

George says it’s rare for times to drop so drastically in such a short period and he envisioned Adjibi being able to compete at the highest levels within four to six years.

What separates Adjibi from so many talented high-level athletes, however, is that was no lucrative scholarship offer to an NCAA school in the United States.

“Almost all of them, whether they’re from Ottawa or Toronto or Edmonton, go south to develop,” George says. “It’s the only story I know like this: someone from an Ottawa high school to a university in his hometown in Ottawa. We all produced this guy. Everything was made in Ottawa.”

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Staying close to home was important to Adjibi, who immigrated to Ottawa from Benin when he was in Grade 7, along with his parents, three older sisters and an older brother. Above all else, the family priority was to ensure he graduated from university.

“My family is pretty happy, but they don’t really understand what it’s all about,” he says. “They get that I’m going to the Olympics, but they don’t really understand how hard it is.”

While Adjibi’s sprint times continued to drop over the years — he claimed gold in both the 100 and 200 metres at the 2022 Canada Summer Games — a series of serious injuries slowed his progress.

That included missing the entire 2023 season with hamstring and knee problems. Accordingly, coming into 2024 he wasn’t generally considered a front-runner for a spot on Canada’s Olympic team.

“I felt like I had a shot at making the Olympic team, but last year, when I was injured, I was not able to show my potential, so I was not in the Olympic conversation,” he says. “There was a lot of rehab. I just had to wait to heal properly.”

In recent months, though, he has repeatedly turned heads, including dropping below the magical 10-second barrier with a 9.98 clocking in Guelph on June 4. (That mark isn’t deemed official, though, since the race was run with a slight tailwind behind Adjibi.)

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The Canadian record of 9.84 is still held by Donovan Bailey, while the world record time by Jamaica’s Usain Bolt is 9.58.

“I was super happy because (breaking 10 seconds) was my biggest goal since I started track,” Adjibi says. “I was smiling for a week after that.”

Adjibi has also run 10.04 and 10.07 this year. Then came the nationals in Montreal in late June.

After running 10.13 in a preliminary round, he made the final and raced against DeGrasse for the first time. DeGrasse is the most decorated Canadian Olympic track athlete ever, with one gold, one silver and four bronze medals.

At the tape, it was too close to call by the naked eye, and a scoreboard originally showed Adjibi as the winner.

Several minutes later, following the official photo review, DeGrasse was declared the winner in 10.20 seconds, ahead of Adjibi’s 10.23, but Adjibi still finished ahead of Aaron Brown, a long-standing member of the national relay team.

“I wouldn’t say I was intimidated, but I’ve been seeing them run for a long time,” Adjibi says. “(DeGrasse) is one of my favourite athletes. Before the race, I knew I had the possibility of winning. I was the only guy to go under 10 seconds this year. I didn’t have a great start, but I came back at them. DeGrasse has so much experience. He sort of relaxed at the line and I tensed up a bit.”

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After spending two weeks back in Ottawa following nationals, Adjibi went to London to compete in a July 20 Diamond League meet. With DeGrasse and Brown sitting out the 4×100 relay, Adjibi joined 2020 silver medallists Brendon Rodney and Jerome Blake, along with Duan Asemota. They finished fourth behind Japan, Australia and Great Britain with a time of 38.35.

Adjibi’s peak years are likely ahead of him and he could find himself competing in both the individual 100 metres and the relay for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

For now, though, it’s all about Paris.

“I’m ready for this,” Adjibi says. “I believe in what I can do.”

kwarren@postmedia.com

X: Citizenkwarren

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