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Derek Drouin

Courtesy of Indiana University Athletics.

Derek Drouin

2012, 2016

Canada’s Humble Superstar

DEREK DROUIN IS AN ANONYMOUS, AND RELUCTANT, SUPERSTAR. YET CONsidering what he achieved and what he overcame, the Indiana University high jumper had one of most epic double comebacks in Olympic history.

In March 2011, he tore two ligaments in his right foot, an injury known as a Lisfranc fracture. Doctors conceded it was potentially career ending. A little more than sixteen months later, he won a bronze medal at the London Olympics.

In May 2016, an MRI scan revealed he had a double stress fracture in his back.

The Olympic Games were set for three months later in Rio de Janeiro.

“I was optimistic that if I did everything people told me to do, it was going to be fine,” Drouin said. “I was confident I could deal with the pain. I only needed to get to Rio, where I knew the adrenaline and the competition would mask any pain.”

In Rio, he applied pressure on his competition when he was first over the bar at 7 feet, 9¾ inches. No one else could clear it.

Qatar’s Mutaz Essa Barshim won silver at 7–8¾ and Ukraine’s Bohdan Bondarenko bronze at 7–7¾. When Bondarenko missed his only attempt at 7–9¾, the gold medal was Drouin’s. He missed once at what would have been an Olympic record of 7–10½, then ended proceedings. He draped himself in the Maple Leaf and posed for photographers.

“It feels pretty sweet,” Drouin said. “There have been some sacrifices, but I’ve always prided myself on my mental toughness.”

He became the Hoosiers’ first individual gold medalist in track and field since long jumper Greg Bell and decathlete Milt Campbell, both in 1956. Drouin and decathlete Milt Campbell are the only athletes out of IU to win track and field medals in two Olympics.

“The last couple of days I had a realization that I wasn’t nervous at all,” he said in Rio. “I was so excited to be out there because I was confident in my preparation, and also I just love the Olympics and was really just taking the whole moment in. I thrive in a situation where there is a lot going on. I don’t sense a whole lot of distractions.”

Drouin had been numbingly consistent in an event in which a miss can separate gold from no medal at all. After he won bronzes at the 2012 Olympics and 2013 World Championships, he won four successive major championships: the 2014 Commonwealth Games, the 2015 Pan American Games, the 2015 World Championships,and the 2016 Olympics.

Obviously, Drouin had a long résumé before he became an Olympic champion. Not that it made him a celebrity.

When he was surrounded by Canadian reporters in London, it was apparent they knew almost nothing about him. Life did not change after that. Nor did it after he won a historic three-way jump-off to win gold at the 2015 World Championships.

“The only time I think about it is when a reporter asks,” Drouin said. “I’ll basically go back to my regular routine as soon as I could after World Championships.”

Students at IU knew less than Canadian media. Drouin took a lifeguarding class in fall 2011 with Chad Canal, who remembered how hard it was to simulate saving someone as tall as six foot five who had “zero body fat.” Later that semester, Canal received a campus email and realized he had been partnered with an NCAA high jump champion.

“We had no idea he was a track superstar,” Canal said. “And he acted like a normal student. Nobody understood this guy being a big deal. Yes, he was tall and very lean, but that’s it.”

Canal, a dentist, later sent Drouin a message apologizing for not recognizing him.

Drouin’s response: “Haha. I’m quite content with not a lot of attention.”

He once sat at a table at York University in Toronto next to a sign asking, “Who am I?” Only one in ten could identify him, and he was already an Olympic medalist. That might have been welcomed by Drouin, but it sometimes rankled Jeff Huntoon, his coach since 2009.

“There’s not the level of respect that he deserves to have. It disappoints me greatly, actually,” Huntoon said.

Drouin’s technique was so good that colleagues told Huntoon that once the high jumper checks in for his event, the coach’s job is over. TV analyst Dwight Stones, a two-time Olympic bronze medalist in the high jump, called Drouin “maybe one of the best technicians in the event today.”

Drouin was born March 6, 1990, in Sarnia, Ontario, the largest city on Lake Huron (population 72,000). He grew up in nearby Corunna. He played hockey—don’t all Canadian boys?—and soccer, basketball, volleyball, and tennis. Because the landing area was viewed as dangerous, the high jump was not allowed in elementary school, and he did not begin that event until high school.

Nor did he confine himself to one event, training for the decathlon. His spurt in the high jump mirrored that of his height. He was five foot seven when he began high school and six inches taller a year later. In about eighteen months, his best jump increased from six foot one to six foot eleven.

His introduction to international competition was the 2007 World Youth Championships at Ostrava, Czech Republic, where he finished tenth, and 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games at Pune, India, where he won a bronze medal. His club coach, Joel Skinner, said the different sports were complementary. Once Drouin specialized in the high jump, improvement accelerated.

“Obviously, his basic athleticism helps him out a lot,” Skinner said.

Indiana would not have recruited Drouin if he did nothing but high jump. Huntoon said the fact Drouin wanted to do other events, and the Hoosiers wanted him to do so, influenced both sides. He eventually scored points at Big Ten meets in the hurdles and javelin.

As a freshman, he finished second in the 2009 Big Ten indoor meet but won every conference high jump title thereafter. He made a breakthrough that summer when he jumped a school record 7–5¼ in the Pan American Junior Championships at Port of Spain, Trinidad. When he swept NCAA indoor and outdoor titles in 2010 and repeated indoors in 2011 with a 7–7¾ jump, the 2012 Olympics seemed inevitable.

But in an outdoor meet at Starkville, Mississippi, he tore ligaments off his right (takeoff) foot. He looked up what the injury was on a website, and he despaired. His distress was eased by a call to his sister Jillian, who once finished third in the NCAA heptathlon for Syracuse University.

“She calmed me down. I knew that it was serious,” he said. “I knew that it would be a lot of hard work. But I never really had a dark moment after that.”

The surgery required two metal screws to be inserted, then removed three months later. The procedure made Drouin’s foot feel arthritic. His rate of recovery astonished everyone. In one practice session, his approach to the bar was so swift and effortless than Indiana coach Ron Helmer, standing across the track, thought Drouin was bounding off a ramp used as training tool. Not so. He was jumping off level ground. Soon thereafter, Drouin won the 2012 Big Ten title, setting a meet record of 7–7.

“Big Ten’s where it turned around,” he said. “I think I really needed that emotionally.”

He jumped 7–7 at the NCAA Championships to finish second to Kansas State’s Erik Kynard, and 7–7 again at the Canadian trials. His build-up to the Olympics included a 7–5 jump for victory in a July 13 meet at London, then 7–6½ for third July 20 at Monaco.

Still, Drouin was neither ranked in the world’s top ten nor projected to be a medalist. He trained with the Canadian team in Kamen, Germany, and didn’t arrive at the Olympic Village until nearly a week after the opening ceremony.

In Olympic qualifying, the customarily precise jumper missed twice at 7–3, a low bar for him. All he could think about was what he would say to his parents, who made the 5,350-mile trip from Corunna.

“‘I’m so sorry I put you through this.’ I’m sure they were more nervous than I was,” Drouin said.

He cleared the bar on his third and final attempt, and kept climbing. He eventually finished sixth, leaping 7–6 to join thirteen other finalists. Drouin was already eleventh in the standings and might not have needed to clear 7–6 but said he wasn’t sure, so he took his third attempt anyway. He missed once at 7–5 and twice at 7–6.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had that many misses in my life,” he said.

The final had a different kind of drama. Drouin made 7–2½, 7–4½ and 7–6, all on first attempts. Eight jumpers cleared 7–6, but only Drouin and three others did so without a miss. Kynard and Russia’s Ivan Ukhov cleared the next bar, 7–7¾. After Drouin missed three times, he said it was “the worst feeling ever” to watch others attempt the same bar. Anyone else’s clearance would have knocked him off the podium.

No one did. Ukhov won gold at 7–9¾ and Kynard silver. Drouin tied for third with Barshim and Great Britain’s Robbie Grabarz, so all three earned bronze medals.

Drouin said he was “hanging on” at the Olympics because he was weary from a long season and inability to train as he had previously. He acknowledged he was lucky because 7–6 was the lowest height to win an Olympic medal since 1976. He actually forecast difficulties because the four-centimeter increase to the next bar— 2.29 to 2.33 meters—was so great. A clean sheet—no misses—was going to matter.

Drouin’s parents, Gatetan and Sheila, came prepared. The jumper ran to where they were seated a few rows up, hugged them, and took the Maple Leaf they brought on a lap of honor. He also had with him a Canadian flag signed by those in his hometown. His longtime club coach, Skinner, “almost broke a couple of ribs” from hugging him so hard, he said.

“I didn’t notice how big the stadium actually was until I was doing my victory lap,” Drouin said. “I do a pretty good job of zoning everything out.”

The Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, tweeted congratulations. Drouin’s medal was the first for Canada in men’s track and field since 1996 and first in a field event since high jumper Greg Joy took silver at Montreal in 1976.

Drouin could have become a pro after that but returned to campus in 2013 for a final season of eligibility. He won national titles indoors and outdoors, making him the first five-time NCAA high jump champion. He won the Bowerman Award, college track and field’s version of the Heisman Trophy. He and two other Hoosiers—Jim Spivey (1982) and Sunder Nix (1984)—are the only track and field athletes ever to win the Jesse Owens Award as the Big Ten’s male all-sports athletes of the year.

Although he didn’t break the collegiate record of 7–9¾ held by Southwestern Louisiana’s Hollis Conway, Drouin had one of the most prolific seasons ever by a collegiate high jumper. Conway had fourteen meets of 7–7 or higher in 1989, seven coming after the college season. Drouin had eleven such meets, four after the college season. During an indoor heptathlon, he jumped 7–6½, a world record for multievents.

“I love being a part of a team. That’s why I chose to go to Indiana—because I love the team,” Drouin said. “I had one more season of my life that I could be on a team like that. I wasn’t going to give up being a part of something like that. That was my main reason for going back, and I loved it. And I’m so happy that I did.”

If he left IU with one regret, it might be failure to score in the 110-meter hurdles at the 2013 Big Ten meet. He was going so fast while leading a semifinal that he smacked barriers late and didn’t advance.

He completed a four-year Big Ten outdoor sweep, then finished third in the Prefontaine Classic at Eugene, Oregon, setting a Canadian record of 7–8¾. Six days later, he beat Kynard at Eugene to win the NCAA title at 7–8.

If London was an occasion in which a low jump realized a medal, the 2013 World Championships in Moscow were the antithesis of that. To stay in contention, Drouin had to make 7–2½, 7–4½, 7–6, 7–7¼ and 7–8½, all on his first attempts. Then he broke his own seventy-five-day-old Canadian record by jumping 7–9¾ for a bronze medal. It was the highest third-place jump in history. Drouin said he never thought 7–9¾ would be worth only third.

“I had no choice but to be composed in such a final,” Drouin said. “I am proud of myself. It feels really good.”

Drouin became the first IU male athlete to win a world medal since Jim Spivey’s bronze in the 1,500 meters in 1987.

Ukraine’s Bohdan Bondarenko won gold with a World Championships record of 7–10¾. Barshim took silver, also at 7–9¾, because he cleared that height on the first attempt and Drouin on the second. Olympic champion Ukhov finished fourth at 7–8½ and Kynard fifth at 7–7¼.

In 2014, a year without a global championship, Drouin was ranked fourth in the world. On April 24, in the Drake Relays at Des Moines, Iowa, he raised his Canadian record to 7–10½ (2.40 meters). Through 2019, only six men in history had gone higher. He jumped 7–7 to win a gold medal in the Commonwealth Games at

Glasgow, Scotland, and 7–7 again to finish fourth in the Continental Cup at Marrakesh, Morocco.

After the college season, Huntoon was fired as an assistant coach for the Hoosiers. He continued to coach Drouin, though, and took a job with Athletics Canada.

In 2015, Drouin won golds in his two major competitions: Pan American Games at Toronto (7–9¼) and World Championships at Beijing (7–8). He won the world title in a dramatic jump-off against Bondarenko, the defending champion, and China’s Guowei Zhang. Drouin became Canada’s first high jump world champion, and first world champion in any event out of IU.

“I was telling myself that if there was ever an opportunity (to win gold), this was it,” Drouin said. “I really felt like I was the one to beat, that this was my championship to lose. I told myself so many times that ‘you can win this, you can win this,’ that when it finally happened, it was just a relief.”

Rain stopped shortly before competition began, erasing his takeoff mark. He adjusted, and was one of three jumpers tied for first at 7–7¾. They missed three times each at 7–8¾, and then a fourth time. The bar was lowered to 7–8, and Drouin cleared on his first attempt. When the two others missed, Drouin was gold medalist. Bondarenko and Zhang tied for silver. Oddly, Drouin said he had been so frustrated with a new approach that he just wanted the season to be over.

“Luckily, I was patient, and things finally worked out and things clicked, and when they clicked, they really clicked,” he said.

Leading up to the Rio Olympics, he relocated from Bloomington to Toronto so he could work more closely with Huntoon on a daily basis. Drouin amended his technique, speeding up and taking longer strides toward the bar. But he began feeling back pain in January, so he cut short his indoor season. After jumping 7–6 at Qatar in early May, he learned the diagnosis of the two fractures but did not reveal the condition publicly.

There were days he wondered if he would jump in Rio de Janeiro. Over time, his condition improved. He met with a sports psychologist for the first time. Then, less than a month before the Olympic final, he jumped 7–9¾, beating top rival Barshim. It was Drouin’s highest jump in twenty-seven months, since his Canadian record in Des Moines. He did not raise the bar, so he ended that meet without missing once. That is called a clean sheet, and few keep it as clean as Drouin.

He said pressure in Rio could be viewed in two ways: that because he had an Olympic medal, he had none; or because he was world champion, he had much.

“Dealing with pressure is something I’ve been pretty good at,” he said.

In the Olympic Village, several days before he was to compete, he dreamed he won the gold medal. He said he felt relieved, then reminded himself that he spent his entire life dreaming about going to the Olympic Games.

“Yet here I am wishing it away,” he said. “I had to stop wishing this was over and enjoy the moment.”

He breezed through qualifying, jumping 7–6, the same height he had cleared to win bronze four years before. In the final, he was as precise as a Swiss timing device. He cleared six bars on first attempts: 7–2½, 7–4½, 7–6, 7–7¾, 7–8¾, 7–9¾.

No one else could match that. He missed once at what would have been an Olympic record of 7–10½, then stopped. Winning gold was “probably one of the most powerful emotions I’ve ever felt,” Drouin said.

“He focuses on what he’s going to do, and he goes through the process,” Huntoon said. “That’s why he looks like he does. Some may call it boring, but it was awfully damn exciting tonight.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau congratulated him on Twitter. Radio stations in Canada were “buzzing with his performance,” according to Matheiu Gentes of Athletics Canada. His countrymen gathered around TVs to watch. Drouin subsequently held a news conference at Rio’s Main Press Center.

Only two other men had ever won high jump gold with zero misses en route: Russia’s Andrey Silnov in 2008 and West Germany’s Dietmar Mogenburg in 1984.

Drouin became the second Canadian to win gold in the high jump, after Duncan McNaughton at Los Angeles in 1932, and first in a field event since then. Drouin was Canada’s first gold medalist in individual track or field since 100-meter winner Donovan Bailey in 1996.

Considering his injured back, Drouin’s comeback was reminiscent of several others in Olympic lore:

· In 1964, Al Oerter endured a chronic cervical disc injury, then tore cartilage in his lower ribs while practicing in Tokyo less than a week before discus qualifying. In the final, he set an Olympic record of 200–1 to win the third of his four gold medals.

· In 1968, Tommie Smith pulled an adductor in his groin in the 200-meter semifinals. Two hours later, he won the gold medal and set a world record of 19.83 seconds. That prefaced the demonstration by himself and John Carlos during the medal ceremony.

· In 1984, Joan Benoit underwent arthroscopic surgery on her knee seventeen days before the US marathon trials. She won, then became the first women’s marathon gold medalist.

Drouin always trained as if he were competing in the decathlon. Contrary to the if-it’s-not-broke-don’t-fix-it maxim, he broke down his technique to fix it. His approach to the bar became faster, creating high risk for high jumps.

In April 2017, he jumped 7–5¾—a world record for a decathlon—en route to a score of 7,150 points. He also owns the high jump record, 7–6½, for an indoor heptathlon. An Achilles injury knocked him out of the 2017 World Championships, and he missed the 2018 and 2019 seasons because of a spinal injury causing pain in his neck.

If he could return to form, he would have a chance to be the second three-time high jump medalist ever. The only one is Sweden’s Patrik Sjoberg, who won silvers in 1984 and 1992 and bronze in 1988.