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By Keiran Gorsky
It’s hard to describe your average day when none of your days are average.
“You know, there’s three things that people love,” Ottawa’s Segun Makinde explains. “Ice cream, pizza… and the third one is toast. There are ice cream shops and pizza shops but no toast shops.”
In other words, the former Olympic sprinter has kept himself pretty occupied since he last competed in 2018. From his ongoing speaking circuit, to his Inner Olympian podcast, to his very real gourmet toast shop, Makinde might very well be busier now than he was at the peak of his sprinting career.
There is perhaps a single sentiment tying all his scattered ambitions together. In his 2021 TEDx Talk, beaming through vast improbabilities, Makinde recounts his unlikely return to the 2016 Rio Olympics after tearing his hamstring 12 weeks prior.
His fixation extends through the improbable all the way to the murky impossible. To that end, he calculated the probability of himself, one Earthly resident in 7.6 billion, making it back to those 2016 Olympics after the fact. He wound up with the comforting figure of 0.0000015764%.
“Do what you think is impossible,” Makinde offers before an intense musical send off. “I dare you.”
It’s a big part of why Makinde has found himself back on the track this year, in an entirely unfamiliar capacity. Tethered arm to arm, he has served as the guide for visually impaired para runner George Quarcoo, most recently at the 2025 World Para Athletics Championships in New Delhi.
In the T11 category for para athletes who are unable to see the shape of a hand at any distance, guides will help steady their running mates with a series of verbal and physical cues. Many guides, like Makinde, have competed at the highest levels themselves, almost a prerequisite to keep with world-class athletes like Quarcoo.
Makinde and Quarcoo had crossed paths a number of times before, including at the 2018 Commonwealth Games, for which they both travelled to Australia. They only truly became acquainted through the efforts of former Olympian and mutual coach Charles Allen, who recognized Quarcoo needed a new guide and Makinde needed a new challenge.
“I knew absolutely nothing,” Makinde recounts. “George and Charles kind of guided me, funnily enough.”
The tie, so to speak, between runner and guide is inherently intimate. There is an elusive competitive trust, not only that your guide might keep you on course to the finish line, but that they will be capable of keeping pace with you step-for-step. Paradoxically, guides must be perpetually present but never really there.
“He’s running with me, I’m not running,” Makinde puts it succinctly.
Quarcoo was fresh off a Canadian record in the T11 men’s 100 metres heading into New Delhi, with a time of 11.24 seconds at the YUTC Twilight meet at York University. That record he broke was, of course, his own.
The 30-year-old who’s competed international for over a decade dashed that record in the fourth heat of the first round in India with a new personal-best of 11.14, finishing ahead of Paralympic silver medallist Timothee Adolphe of France and world champion Chris Kinda of Namibia to win himself a spot in the semi-finals.
Quarcoo was a relative underdog in the biggest race of his life, pitted against three Paralympic champions in Ananias Shikongo of Namibia, Di Dongdong of China and Enderson Santos of Venezuela.
He and Makinde were off to a promising start when their tether came loose and slipped off. It took them only a moment to get it back on, but a moment very quickly becomes an eternity in sprints over short distances. Quarcoo wound up finishing the race in 11.42, behind eventual medallists in Shikongo and Di.
It hardly felt fair, but Makinde is proud of how they handled the situation in the heat of the moment. Discussing the race with George after the fact, Makinde recalls, they both agreed they reacted as best they could given the bad turn of fortune.
“It was an absolutely great run,” maintains the Colonel By Secondary School grad. “I think we put ourselves in a really good position. Stuff just happens in sport. There’s no way to really explain it.”
Makinde was Ottawa’s sole representative in New Delhi (which drew about as many spectators as the COVID Games in Tokyo where they were banned).
Sprinter Bianca Borgella and middle-distance runner Keegan Gaunt, 2024 Paralympians from Ottawa, have both been sidelined with long-term injuries.
The short-term plan, Makinde notes as he faces a 9.5-hour time jump back in Canada, is to “rest, rest, rest.” As for what the future holds, he has all but given up trying to guess.
“If you were to ask me last year at this time, if I would see myself here, I’d probably say no, because I had no idea,” Makinde laughs.
Should he remain Quarcoo’s partner, tethered arm-to-arm, he hopes to guide Quarcoo to his ‘Impossible,’ whatever it may be.
Now based in Toronto, Makinde’s crowded calendar flips on indifferently. A fair portion of his schedule is occupied by We Love Toast, Makinde’s very real gourmet toast shop. But the shop is listed as “temporarily closed” on Google at present.
Not to worry, Makinde promises.
“I kind of have to keep it under wraps, I can’t really say too much,” signals the 34-year-old University of Ottawa and Queen’s University grad. “But I can say this: You will be able to try it soon.”