Jerome Blake

Blake was born in Buff Bay, Jamaica, where he started his young track career as a hurdler in the 400 m. After attending his brother's soccer game, he began testing his speed on track which a coach noticed and convinced him to switch to sprinting. The Blake family moved to Canada in 2013, taking up residence in Kelowna, British Columbia initially, and eventually moving to Burnaby. Because he did not acquire Canadian citizenship until 2018, he was unable to participate in many international junior competitions, though he remarked that had he been born in Canada "I probably would have been playing hockey." Blake competed for British Columbia at the 2017 Canada Summer Games where he won gold in both the 100 m and 200 m. Debuting at the senior level, Blake soon became a regular member of Canada's relay teams, winning a gold medal at the 2018 NACAC Championships. Blake competed at the 2019 Pan American Games in Lima, finishing sixth in the 200 m and fourth in the 4×100 relay. In the buildup to the 2020 Summer Olympics, which were taking place in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Blake competed at the Canadian National Trials. There he placed in second place and as a result Blake was named to Canada's Olympic team. He then set a new personal best just before the games, running 10.15 seconds in Stockholm in early July. As a part of the 4x100 m relay team, he won a bronze medal in the 4x100 m relay. On 18 February 2022, Great Britain was stripped of its silver medal in the men's 4×100 m relay after the Court of Arbitration for Sport confirmed CJ Ujah’s doping violation. Canada was upgraded to silver.