Wrecked ankle ignited Olympic dream for runner from humble family of 8 kids

By Dan Plouffe

Farah Jacques
Athletics
Age: 26
Local Club: Ottawa Lions

Olympics: First

Twitter: @farah_jacques

SCHEDULE

Thu. Aug. 18
Women’s 4×100 m
Round 1
8:30 a.m. ET

Fri. Aug. 19
Women’s 4×100 m
Final
7:10 p.m. ET

Farah Jacques has wanted to go to the Olympics since the time she could barely even walk. Not as a toddler though, but as a 22-year-old with a wrecked ankle.

Jacques has always been a very strong sprinter, representing Quebec at the 2009 Canada Games. But the Montreal native certainly wasn’t on a probable Olympic trajectory at the time, failing to reach any event finals.

“I wasn’t shooting for the top,” Jacques highlights. “I’d do well in competitions, I was training, but sometimes I’d miss practice. I don’t think I was mature enough.”

There was a definitive change when she moved to Gatineau in 2012 and began training under Ottawa Lions Track-and-Field coach Glenroy Gilbert out of Terry Fox Athletic Facility.

But, strangely enough, it was only after the Université du Québec en Outaouais student suffered a severe ankle injury – by catching her foot on the track’s inner metal barrier when trying to exit the track quickly after her leg of a relay in Boston – that her Olympic dream truly took root.

“When I was doing nothing, I was like, ‘My God, I need something.’ I couldn’t just go to school and work,” recounts Jacques, who missed a full season recovering from her injury. “I said to myself, ‘No. I can’t finish like that.’ I couldn’t live with myself if I stopped doing track without giving everything I had. I had a feeling that I could give more. So I said, ‘I’m going to get back on my two feet, and I’m going to live the Games.’”

Watching the London 2012 Olympics also helped inspire her, as did her coach, the 1996 Olympic 4×100 m relay champion who now directs Canada’s relay teams.

“I know that I can reach the greatest heights with him,” signals the 26-year-old. “He’s a tough coach. If you’re not serious, then forget it, you’re out of the club. For me, I needed a coach like that.”

Jacques continued an upward progression and earned the chance to represent Canada at the 2015 FISU World University Games in South Korea, finishing 6th in the women’s 200 meters.

Cracking the senior national team was another step up still, however, and she’d have to work her way onto the Olympic team despite not receiving any national carding financial assistance. Thankfully, Jacques underlines, sponsorship from the Running Room as well as the Bruny Surin Foundation allowed her to train full-time.

The Foundation also covers her tuition at UQO. Jacques would like to be a math and phys ed teacher because she loves kids and their energy – a product of her own upbringing as the eldest of three sisters with five older brothers, she says.

“My parents didn’t have many means,” notes Jacques, whose family moved to Canada from Haïti just before she was born and had a house with one bedroom for the girls and one more for the boys. “We were pretty squished, but I think that has helped us stay close because we’ve always been close.”

Telling her family when she got the news that she was headed to the Rio Olympics was just about as exciting as when Jacques got the email confirming she was on the team.

“Oh my God, they were super happy,” recalls the Jacques family’s lone runner. “My mom was screaming, ‘I knew it! I knew it! I prayed so much for you!’

“She was so happy, and my brothers too, they were so proud of me. That made me so happy.”

But Jacques’ Olympic dream isn’t yet quite complete. She was one of six athletes selected as possible candidates to race in the 4×100 m relay, but she failed to earn her coveted place in the 200 m, finishing 3rd at the Canadian Olympic trials and missing the required qualification time.

“I am going to soak in every moment at the Games,” pledges Jacques, who ran a 200 m personal-best time of 23.21 seconds in March. “And it motivates me even more because I’ll be there, so in four years, I won’t be asking myself, ‘Oh, am I going to be on the track?’ because it’ll be my 200 meters.

“That’s what I’m shooting for and I am positive I can do it. I was so close, so now I see there’s nothing that can stop me.”

Advice to young aspiring Olympians:

“Never quit. Pursue your dream. Have confidence and go for it. And have fun.”