July 3, 2008

Jared Connaughton was always fast.  

Whether he was at the hockey rink or on the soccer field, he was by far the fastest kid in New Haven, P.E.I., an offensive-minded forward who left defenders in his dust.

“It was sort of my thing,” he recalls. “I was known for it.”

He relied on it. He never spent much time refining his technical skills in either sport because his breakaway speed alone was enough to make him an effective player.

But he didn’t officially begin his journey to becoming the fastest man in Canada until he hit Grade 11.

That’s when he discovered track — a sport he’d never considered because his small Maritime island didn’t have proper facilities — and dropped everything to make it his life.

“Track and field isn’t something participated in at a high level in my province,” Connaughton says.

“To see it as something that could get you on an Olympic team, or an opportunity for an education or a profession, was a lofty goal.”

Connaughton can thank David MacEachern, a Charlottetown, P.E.I., native and gold-medal winning bobsledder at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, for helping him find his true calling relatively late in the career of a sprinter.

MacEachern was looking for elite athletes to train for high-level sport, and he found a great one in Connaughton.

The two connected in March 2002, and six months of heavy training later, Connaughton won a gold medal in the 200 metres at the Canadian youth championships.

“I went from basically nothing to the fastest youth in Canada in a very short period of time,” he says.

“I think that was my awakening as far as what my potential could possibly be.”

It’s been a miraculous evolution for Connaughton, who, at age 22, is a shoo-in for an Olympic spot after completing a four-year track career at the University of Texas at Arlington.

With no formal track facilities in P.E.I., Connaughton learned the ropes in a 60-metre hallway outside his school gym, and when the weather improved, he took his training outside.

“I hammered blocks into the turf on the soccer field, I ran on a dirt track, I ran on a baseball diamond, I ran up sand dunes,” he says. “The sky’s the limit on my imagination, training-wise.

“At the time, I didn’t know any better. I later learned it was kind of a crazy training atmosphere. But it worked for me.”

He says there are times when he wonders where he’d be today if he hadn’t quit hockey or soccer, but those moments are fleeting because of the success he’s had as a sprinter.

“I’m considered, right now, on paper, Canada’s fastest man, and that’s a pretty cool place to be,” he says.

His best time in the 100 is 10.15 seconds, and he has a 20.35 clocking in the 200. Both are Olympic A standards. He is confident he will reach his peak in Beijing.

“All I have to do is execute and I can be one of the fastest men in the world,” Connaughton said.

“That’s a really, promising, motivating thought to give yourself every day.”