Photo courtesy of Greystoke Photography

Former Okanagan Sun receiver/returner Jerome Blake helped Canada win an Olympic bronze medal in the men's 4x100 relay at Tokyo 2020.

It is Canada’s fourth Olympic medal all-time in the event and comes 25 years after the gold medal won at Atlanta 1996.

The lineup for the final had Aaron Brown leading off, followed by Jerome Blake and Brendon Rodney, who made the final handoff to anchor runner Andre De Grasse. That same quartet had raced in the heats, where their time of 37.92 seconds ranked them third heading into the final. They had done that after Brown and De Grasse had gotten only about three hours of sleep following the 200m final where De Grasse won gold and Brown finished sixth.

For the final, the Canadians were in lane 4. They had clean handoffs throughout the race, but when the baton got to De Grasse, he had some ground to make up, trailing behind Great Britain, Italy, China and Jamaica. But he turned on that trademark speed to get past China and Jamaica, coming in for the bronze in 37.70 seconds. Italy won the gold in 37.50, beating out Great Britain by 0.01 of a second.