Music: {allcanada} Canada's best high jumper sets sights on WR

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Derek Drouin stands a few steps back from his piece of white tape placed on the track. It’s 65 feet from a bar that rests on two silver standards 2.40 metres in the air, about a foot and a half above his head. As he shuffles his feet and focuses, everything around him becomes a blur. It’s his third and final attempt at clearing the bar.

Drouin takes three small steps toward his tape, hits it with the tip of his left foot and begins four long bounding strides forward. Dropping his right shoulder away from the bar he starts running his curve to the right. The next three steps are powerful and quick. On the last one, he makes sure to point his right foot towards the back right corner of the mat. He reaches his left arm up as high as he can while driving his knee straight up with it.

He’s in the air. The hard part is over.

Reaching his left arm over the bar he drops his hand over the top. His head drops, looking to the back of the mat as his shoulders and hips follow. He reminds himself to kick his legs over to avoid touching the bar. Crushing his left shoulder into the mat, he rolls into a somersault and stands to his feet. The adrenaline pumps through him as the bar sits still. He jumps up with both arms raised in the air.

That leap broke the Canadian men’s high jump record by two centimetres. “I went over to double-check to make sure that the standard was actually set at 2.40,” Drouin says.

Drouin has set a new Canadian mark three times since 2013 and is now part of an elite group of only 10 men to ever clear 2.40m outdoors. “I have always considered it to be a lifetime goal,” he says. “I always said if I could ever clear 2.40 I would be pretty darn happy and satisfied with my career.”

But now, not so much.

The 24-year-old Olympic and world championship bronze medallist from Corunna, Ont., has no plans to stop at 2.40m. “The only reasonable thing to do, as a competitive being, is to set my next sights on the world record,” Drouin says.

To accomplish that task it would take a massive clearance of 2.46m — six centimetres higher than Drouin’s personal best. The record of 2.45m was set by Javier Sotomayer 11 years ago. Joel Skinner, Drouin’s coach since the age of 16, says that with his determination, physical abilities and the way he’s been jumping, there is no reason Drouin can’t grab the world record. “The scary part is I think there are probably three or four other guys in the world who can break the record,” Skinner says.

Over the next four months, Drouin will compete all over the world in the IAAF Diamond League, a series of seven meets where he will jump against 10 other competitors. The first event, in Doha, Qatar, was just three weeks after his 2.40m clearance. The Diamond League showcases some of the biggest competitors in the event with four other men who have previously cleared 2.40m. He was able to clear 2.37m, which tied him for second place. The fourth-place jumper in Doha also cleared a finishing height of 2.37m, the highest mark an athlete has had to jump to secure that position in the standings.

Drouin doesn’t think about the fact that he could be breaking a record in his approach to the bar. “It is nice to go into a meet and sort of just let a competitive spirit come over you … not sitting there at the back of your approach saying, ‘This is a Canadian record or this is so and so record.’ It is more just I have to jump this to win.”

Practising the higher heights makes the daunting task of jumping over eight feet easier. In order to clear that height, it helps to have a few shots at it beforehand, like when Drouin cleared 2.40m. It also means that he may have to take some more gambles with his jumps, something Drouin is happy to do in the Diamond League without the pressure of a world championship on the horizon. “It is one of those things that you can either clear a massive height or you can crash and burn. This is a year to experiment … and hopefully good things come from that,” Drouin says.

The next Diamond League meet is in Rome, Italy on June 5 where Drouin plans to test out his new goal. “If you don’t try new things you don’t know necessarily whether something else could be working better for you,” he says.

“I have nothing to lose.”

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