ELIEZER ADJIBI
Sport: Athletics
Event: Men’s 4×100-metre relay
Age: 23
Hometown: Ottawa
Residence: Ottawa
Local Club: CANI Athletics
First Olympics
Instagram: @eliezeradj
VIEW ELIEZER’S COMPETITION SCHEDULE HERE.
By Martin Cleary
For a brief period of time and confusion, a disbelieving and celebratory Eliezer Adjibi thought he was the Canadian men’s 100-metre sprint champion at the 2024 national championships on June 28 in Montreal.
It said so, right there, on the scoreboard.
In his moment of shocked happiness, the Ottawa runner couldn’t fathom he had beaten Canada’s best, including international stars Andre De Grasse and Aaron Brown. A smiling De Grasse, however, felt he had won and was celebrating in the post-race uncertainty.
Adjibi didn’t want to waste his apparent moment so he took a victory jog.
But shortly after the timing officials had reviewed the photo finish, there would be another story to tell about the conclusion of the men’s senior 100-metre final.
De Grasse, the 2017 national champion, did edge Adjibi by the slimmest of margins for the title. Adjibi finished 0.03 seconds behind the most decorated male Olympian (six medals) in Canadian history. The final, which won’t be remembered for its fast-finishing times, saw De Grasse claim first place in 10.20 seconds, while Adjibi crossed the finish line in 10.23 seconds.
“For the first three to four minutes, they said I won,” Adjibi, 23, said in a recent phone interview about his dramatic finish and uplifting season. “At first, I wasn’t sure. I waited before celebrating and taking a victory lap.
“And then it changed. They switched the rankings on the big scoreboard. The announcer said there’s a mistake. Nobody likes to lose, but I’m still OK with it.
“(Being three one-hundredths of a second back) gives me more confidence. I can compete with these guys. I’m excited for that.”
While Adjibi’s strong race didn’t produce a national title, it was a vital piece of information that went into Athletics Canada selecting him to Canada’s team for the Paris 2024 Summer Olympic Games.
In the semifinals of the men’s 100 metres, Adjibi, who will compete for a berth on the men’s 4×100-metre relay team, strengthened his resume with an even faster time of 10.13 seconds.
A healthy Adjibi, who missed a good part of the 2023 sprint season because of injury, entered the 2024 Canadian championships having run four times under 10.1 seconds and then proceeded to show he’s capable of competing shoulder to shoulder with elite sprinters like De Grasse and Brown.
A few days after his men’s 100-metre silver-medal effort, Adjibi learned he had been nominated by Athletics Canada and approved by the Canadian Olympic Committee for his first Olympics.
It also was a milestone moment for his Ottawa-based club, C.A.N.I. Athletics, which stands for Constant and Never-ending Improvement. Lyndon George, a former 400-metre runner for his native St. Lucia at the 1987 world championships and the 1996 Summer Olympics, founded the club 14 years ago and is its director.
C.A.N.I. Athletics has guided many of its athletes to provincial, national and international success, but never to an Olympic Games.
“Eliezer is our first Olympian and there’s immense pride from all of us here at C.A.N.I. Athletics,” George wrote in an email interview. “I’ve been getting countless messages from our alums about how happy they are to see this. It’s a validation of the work we have put in.”
George understands why Adjibi has earned his Olympic status.
“Eliezer is one of the most consistent beings you’d ever meet,” he added. “Very meticulous with a work ethic of the highest level.
“Eliezer started training the summer after Grade 11. In Grade 10, he was not good enough to make his school’s relay team. In his fifth year (of sprinting), with a sense of self confidence and commitment, he has made himself a world-class athlete and Olympian. He is the epitome of the late bloomer. He is just scratching the surface of his potential.”
Adjibi, a graduate of Louis-Riel high school and a fourth-year mechanical engineering student at the University of Ottawa, has definitely put in the work, but it took him a long time to reach this point.
For his first three years in high school, he showed potential to be a speedster as he casually trained with his friends. But he was reluctant to leave soccer with the Cumberland United organization as he was learning so much about the sport.
Adjibi enjoyed training with his school friends, who were on the Louis-Riel track and field team. On occasion, he would test his speed in a challenge race against them and saw he could keep pace.
Lotfi Khaida, a two-time Olympian (1988 and 1992) for Algeria in long jump and triple jump, noticed Adjibi when he was a coach at the Louis Riel Dome. Khaida encouraged Adjibi to try sprinting.
When Adjibi was in Grade 12, he decided to give track a try and his curiosity, drive and dedication delivered him a new sport, despite a series of injuries that would come over the next five years.
The 2018 OFSAA high school track and field championships were his first big assignment and he passed with flying colours. He won bronze medals in both the boys’ senior 100 metres (10.93 seconds, but 10.58 seconds in the heats) and 200 metres (21.94 seconds and 21.87 seconds in the heats). Adjibi also anchored the Louis-Riel team to sixth place in the boys’ 4×100-metre relay final.
“I’ve become a lot stronger at C.A.N.I.,” said Adjibi, who moved to Ottawa from Benin in Grade 7. “For sprinting, you need to be strong. I didn’t have a big background in the sport, but I’m starting now. In Grade 12, I weighed 140 pounds and by the end of the (school) year I was 155 pounds. I got stronger so I wouldn’t get injured.”
But an injury hampered most of Adjibi’s 2019 season, which did see him run a personal-best 10.55 seconds.
“I wasn’t happy (about the injury), but I kept at it,” he continued.
He was still dealing with the injury in 2020 and then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, which shut down the training gyms and halted his competitive sprint season. But he kept at it.
By 2021, Adjibi was back in the starting blocks for 14 100-metre races and he pared his personal-best time to 10.32 seconds at an Ontario High Performance Series meet in Toronto. His overall block of work earned him a berth in Athletics Canada’s national team sprint pool.
He lowered his best-ever time to 10.23 seconds in 2022, placed fourth at the Canadian championships and won the men’s 100 metres at the Canada Summer Games in a meet record 10.32 seconds.
“It felt good. I felt I did what I had to do,” Adjibi said with great satisfaction.
His 2023 season was again marred by injury, after he ran 10.21 seconds and 10.24 seconds in two races at the Bob Vigars Classic in London. Injuries to his right hamstring and left knee interrupted his progress that summer.
“I was motivated coming into this season,” Adjibi said. “Some people never thought it was possible for me to run (with the best) because I kept getting injured. I said: ‘Let me do what I can do and see what happens. I’ll put my best on the track.’”
He followed that strategy perfectly and it rocketed him into a remarkable season.
At the LSU invitational meet, which was Adjibi’s opening race for the 2024 season, he lit up the scoreboard with a wind-aided clocking of 10.05 seconds to win his heat. The wind blew at 4.0 metres per second, which is exactly double the allowable limit of 2.0 metres per second to produce a legal time.
At his next meet in Clermont, Florida, he also had a wind-aided 10.09-second time (2.3 metres per second), but his second 100-metre dash that day in the PURE Athletics Sprint Elite Meet was a personal-best 10.07 seconds (2.0).
On June 4, Adjibi put together his two fastest back-to-back races at the Royal City Inferno meet in Guelph, when he sprinted 10.04 seconds with a 2.0-metre-per-second wind and 9.98 seconds (2.1).
But Adjibi isn’t surprised by his jump to the next level of sprinting and becoming an Olympic athlete.
“I do it in practice. I have confidence in the moment,” he said.
The Canadian championships last month in Montreal were a perfect example of Adjibi having that confidence in the moment.
After placing second to Brown in his men’s 100-metre heat in 10.13 seconds, Adjibi qualified for a good lane position (six) on the track for the final.
Focused on staying relaxed and running hard, Adjibi also had to contend with TV cameras in his face for the pre-race, athlete introductions and professional runners like De Grasse and Brown nearby.
Adjibi powered his way down the track and came within two centimetres of matching De Grasse, while beating five-time defending champion Brown (10.25 seconds) by two one-hundredths of a second.
“He’s a talented young man and has been for two to three years,” said Athletics Canada head coach Glenroy Gilbert of Ottawa. “But injuries have kept him from performing. I’m happy he made the team and demonstrated he’s among the best in the country.
“He has stayed healthy. You can have the talent, but if you can’t stay healthy…”
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Martin Cleary has written about amateur sports for over 52 years. A past Canadian sportswriter of the year and Ottawa Sports Awards Lifetime Achievement in Sport Media honouree, Martin retired from full-time work at the Ottawa Citizen in 2012, but continued to write a bi-weekly “High Achievers” column for the Citizen/Sun.
When the pandemic struck, Martin created the High Achievers “Stay-Safe Edition” to provide some positive news during tough times, via his Twitter account at first and now here at OttawaSportsPages.ca.
Martin can be reached by e-mail at martincleary51@gmail.com and on Twitter @martincleary.
