Indiana University Olympians. David Woods
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and tennis. Because the landing area was viewed as dangerous, the high jump was not allowed in elementary school, and he did not begin that event until high school.
Nor did he confine himself to one event, training for the decathlon. His spurt in the high jump mirrored that of his height. He was five foot seven when he began high school and six inches taller a year later. In about eighteen months, his best jump increased from six foot one to six foot eleven.
His introduction to international competition was the 2007 World Youth Championships at Ostrava, Czech Republic, where he finished tenth, and 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games at Pune, India, where he won a bronze medal. His club coach, Joel Skinner, said the different sports were complementary. Once Drouin specialized in the high jump, improvement accelerated.
“Obviously, his basic athleticism helps him out a lot,” Skinner said.
Indiana would not have recruited Drouin if he did nothing but high jump. Huntoon said the fact Drouin wanted to do other events, and the Hoosiers wanted him to do so, influenced both sides. He eventually scored points at Big Ten meets in the hurdles and javelin.
As a freshman, he finished second in the 2009 Big Ten indoor meet but won every conference high jump title thereafter. He made a breakthrough that summer when he jumped a school record 7–5¼ in the Pan American Junior Championships at Port of Spain, Trinidad. When he swept NCAA indoor and outdoor titles in 2010 and repeated indoors in 2011 with a 7–7¾ jump, the 2012 Olympics seemed inevitable.
But in an outdoor meet at Starkville, Mississippi, he tore ligaments off his right (takeoff) foot. He looked up what the injury was on a website, and he despaired. His distress was eased by a call to his sister Jillian, who once finished third in the NCAA heptathlon for Syracuse University.
“She calmed me down. I knew that it was serious,” he said. “I knew that it would be a lot of hard work. But I never really had a dark moment after that.”
The surgery required two metal screws to be inserted, then removed three months later. The procedure made Drouin’s foot feel arthritic. His rate of recovery astonished everyone. In one practice session, his approach to the bar was so swift and effortless than Indiana coach Ron Helmer, standing across the track, thought Drouin was bounding off a ramp used as training tool. Not so. He was jumping off level ground. Soon thereafter, Drouin won the 2012 Big Ten title, setting a meet record of 7–7.
“Big Ten’s where it turned around,” he said. “I think I really needed that emotionally.”
He jumped 7–7 at the NCAA Championships to finish second to Kansas State’s Erik Kynard, and 7–7 again at the Canadian trials. His build-up to the Olympics included a 7–5 jump for victory in a July 13 meet at London, then 7–6½ for third July 20 at Monaco.
Still, Drouin was neither ranked in the world’s top ten nor projected to be a medalist. He trained with the Canadian team in Kamen, Germany, and didn’t arrive at the Olympic Village until nearly a week after the opening ceremony.
In Olympic qualifying, the customarily precise jumper missed twice at 7–3, a low bar for him. All he could think about was what he would say to his parents, who made the 5,350-mile trip from Corunna.
“‘I’m so sorry I put you through this.’ I’m sure they were more nervous than I was,” Drouin said.
He cleared the bar on his third and final attempt, and kept climbing. He eventually finished sixth, leaping 7–6 to join thirteen other finalists. Drouin was already eleventh in the standings and might not have needed to clear 7–6 but said he wasn’t sure, so he took his third attempt anyway. He missed once at 7–5 and twice at 7–6.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had that many misses in my life,” he said.
The final had a different kind of drama. Drouin made 7–2½, 7–4½ and 7–6, all on first attempts. Eight jumpers cleared 7–6, but only Drouin and three others did so without a miss. Kynard and Russia’s Ivan Ukhov cleared the next bar, 7–7¾. After Drouin missed three times, he said it was “the worst feeling ever” to watch others attempt the same bar. Anyone else’s clearance would have knocked him off the podium.
No one did. Ukhov won gold at 7–9¾ and Kynard silver. Drouin tied for third with Barshim and Great Britain’s Robbie Grabarz, so all three earned bronze medals.
Drouin said he was “hanging on” at the Olympics because he was weary from a long season and inability to train as he had previously. He acknowledged he was lucky because 7–6 was the lowest height to win an Olympic medal since 1976. He actually forecast difficulties because the four-centimeter increase to the next bar— 2.29 to 2.33 meters—was so great. A clean sheet—no misses—was going to matter.
Drouin’s parents, Gatetan and Sheila, came prepared. The jumper ran to where they were seated a few rows up, hugged them, and took the Maple Leaf they brought on a lap of honor. He also had with him a Canadian flag signed by those in his hometown. His longtime club coach, Skinner, “almost broke a couple of ribs” from hugging him so hard, he said.
“I didn’t notice how big the stadium actually was until I was doing my victory lap,” Drouin said. “I do a pretty good job of zoning everything out.”
The Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, tweeted congratulations. Drouin’s medal was the first for Canada in men’s track and field since 1996 and first in a field event since high jumper Greg Joy took silver at Montreal in 1976.
Drouin could have become a pro after that but returned to campus in 2013 for a final season of eligibility. He won national titles indoors and outdoors, making him the first five-time NCAA high jump champion. He won the Bowerman Award, college track and field’s version of the Heisman Trophy. He and two other Hoosiers—Jim Spivey (1982) and Sunder Nix (1984)—are the only track and field athletes ever to win the Jesse Owens Award as the Big Ten’s male all-sports athletes of the year.
Although he didn’t break the collegiate record of 7–9¾ held by Southwestern Louisiana’s Hollis Conway, Drouin had one of the most prolific seasons ever by a collegiate high jumper. Conway had fourteen meets of 7–7 or higher in 1989, seven coming after the college season. Drouin had eleven such meets, four after the college season. During an indoor heptathlon, he jumped 7–6½, a world record for multievents.
“I love being a part of a team. That’s why I chose to go to Indiana—because I love the team,” Drouin said. “I had one more season of my life that I could be on a team like that. I wasn’t going to give up being a part of something like that. That was my main reason for going back, and I loved it. And I’m so happy that I did.”
If he left IU with one regret, it might be failure to score in the 110-meter hurdles at the 2013 Big Ten meet. He was going so fast while leading a semifinal that he smacked barriers late and didn’t advance.
He completed a four-year Big Ten outdoor sweep, then finished third in the Prefontaine Classic at Eugene, Oregon, setting a Canadian record of 7–8¾. Six days later, he beat Kynard at Eugene to win the NCAA title at 7–8.
If London was an occasion in which a low jump realized a medal, the 2013 World Championships in Moscow were the antithesis of that. To stay in contention, Drouin had to make 7–2½, 7–4½, 7–6, 7–7¼ and 7–8½, all on his first attempts. Then he broke his own seventy-five-day-old Canadian record by jumping 7–9¾ for a bronze medal. It was the highest third-place jump in history. Drouin said he never thought 7–9¾ would be worth only third.
“I had no choice but to be composed in such a final,” Drouin said. “I am proud of myself. It feels really good.”
Drouin became the first IU male athlete to win a world medal since Jim Spivey’s bronze in the 1,500 meters in 1987.
Ukraine’s Bohdan Bondarenko won gold with a World Championships record of 7–10¾. Barshim took silver, also at 7–9¾, because he cleared that height on the first attempt and Drouin on the second. Olympic champion Ukhov finished fourth at 7–8½ and Kynard fifth at 7–7¼.
In 2014, a year without