PICKERING, Ont. — When Usain Bolt was sprinting to three gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Andre De Grasse was 13 years old and dreaming of playing in the NBA.
He grew up playing soccer and basketball. He could rattle off the names of the best players in the English Premier League. He loved Toronto Raptors star Vince Carter.
It's not that De Grasse didn't know who Bolt was, it's more that he didn't really care about the double world record-holder.
Things haven't changed much as the 20-year-old from Markham, Ont., gets ready to line up this weekend against the best sprinters on the planet at the world track and field championships in Beijing.
"I don't think he's going to be rattled getting in the blocks against Tyson (Gay, a three-time world champion) or Bolt," says his Canadian coach Tony Sharpe. "He never talks about (Justin) Gatlin, Bolt, (Asafa) Powell. Never. Being a little naive about who's around you sometimes can't hurt. Takes away some of that nervous pressure.
"But there's something beyond that with Andre in terms of competitiveness, that can't be ever coached or taught."
It's that inexplicable "something" that saw De Grasse win the 200 metres at the Pan American Games last month in Toronto, despite running out of Lane 8 and in his sixth race in three days.
"I'll go on record saying that 200 metres was the most incredible run I've seen from Lane 8," Sharpe says. "Typically when somebody makes up the stagger on you and you're in the outside lane, it's lights out.
"But he never quit. He came back with 10 metres to go to win. That doesn't happen. Ever."
And while reaching the podium in Beijing might be a tall order for De Grasse, who's coming off a busy Pan Am schedule and a long NCAA season, Sharpe would never count out Canada's new face of sprinting.
"Take in the fact that he ran three high-quality 100 metres (in Toronto), that (200 victory) comes from someplace deep. It's not coachable. The guy just refuses to lose," Sharpe says. "I would never bet against him on any given day."
De Grasse has rocketed up the world rankings since Sharpe spotted him as a Grade 12 student in a high school meet at York University, racing down the track with an unorthodox and unsightly style that still makes the coach laugh.
Over coffee in Pickering, Ont., Sharpe and Andre's mom Beverley De Grasse roar at the memory.
"Mechanics-wise, we had to fix a few things . . . stop looking at the sky. Like a little kid. He used to run looking at the sky," Sharpe says, chuckling. "We have videos of some of the events at York, it's hilarious, we just die watching him, we just crack up."
"I'm watching him training, and I'm saying to some of the other parents 'Oh my god, what is he looking at?'" Beverley adds — and then demonstrates, head up, arms pumping. "I remember Tony yelling over to me saying 'I don't know how he runs that fast, looking up in the air.'"
But De Grasse was a quick learner.
"He's an athlete, makes life easier," Sharpe says.
Beverley saw the speed in her son as a child, the way he could outrun his opponents with a ball at his feet, or in his hand. And he already had that relentless competitive spirit.
"When his team was down and they really needed him to come back, and win the game, he would fight down to the end," Beverley says. "He always had the fierceness about him."
His nickname "Tip" comes from basketball. His bedroom is Raptors-themed. When he was six, Beverley hired a painter to do a mural of the team's old dinosaur logo on the wall. It's still there.
Beverley and Sharpe chuckle about that, too.
"He doesn't want me to change it," Beverley says.
De Grasse's dreams of a pro basketball career had fizzled out by Grade 12 when Sharpe spotted him.
Beverley wasn't sold on her son running track. He'd been accepted to several colleges around the GTA and she told him he should be focusing on making a life for himself.
But two months after he first sprinted down the track, he was beating the top high-schoolers in the country. A year later, in 2013, he ran 10.25 seconds in the 100 to break the Canadian junior record.
"When you think of all the great Canadian sprinters that ran through the junior years in Canada, (Donovan Bailey and Bruny Surin, to name two) for him to do that, at 18 years old, off minimal training, you know the future is pretty bright," Sharpe says.
It wasn't until his spectacular performance at this year's NCAA championships though that De Grasse finally hit people's radars. He won both the 100 and 200 for the USC Trojans, with less than 45 minutes between races in times — just slightly wind-aided — that made him a serious contender for the world and Olympic podium.
Life hasn't been the same since, Beverley says. As she poses shyly for pictures, the photographer moving her this way and that, Sharpe teasingly calls her "Paparazzi Mama."
De Grasse became the face of the Pan Am Games, appearing on posters and billboards around Toronto. The day after his last race, he was at a local track filming with CBC for an upcoming episode of "The Nature of Things."
Players in a nearby flag football game spotted him and abandoned the game.
"They swarmed Andre, with their cameras," Sharpe recalls. "I said 'Andre, you're a rock star, dude.'"
Beverley isn't too worried about how her only child will handle the spotlight.
"Andre and I are very, very close, whatever is bothering him, he's not afraid to come to me and talk. That's the way I brought him up," she says. "As I say to him 'You're 20, you're young, you have a whole life ahead of you in track.' So my expectations for him at worlds is not that he's going to go out there and win the 100 metres.
"I just want him to do the best that he can on the day and be happy with himself."
The 100-metre final is Sunday. De Grasse isn't running the 200 but will compete as part of Canada's 4x100 relay.
