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 a global championship, Drouin was ranked fourth in the world. On April 24, in the Drake Relays at Des Moines, Iowa, he raised his Canadian record to 7–10½ (2.40 meters). Through 2019, only six men in history had gone higher. He jumped 7–7 to win a gold medal in the Commonwealth Games at
Glasgow, Scotland, and 7–7 again to finish fourth in the Continental Cup at Marrakesh, Morocco.
After the college season, Huntoon was fired as an assistant coach for the Hoosiers. He continued to coach Drouin, though, and took a job with Athletics Canada.
In 2015, Drouin won golds in his two major competitions: Pan American Games at Toronto (7–9¼) and World Championships at Beijing (7–8). He won the world title in a dramatic jump-off against Bondarenko, the defending champion, and China’s Guowei Zhang. Drouin became Canada’s first high jump world champion, and first world champion in any event out of IU.
“I was telling myself that if there was ever an opportunity (to win gold), this was it,” Drouin said. “I really felt like I was the one to beat, that this was my championship to lose. I told myself so many times that ‘you can win this, you can win this,’ that when it finally happened, it was just a relief.”
Rain stopped shortly before competition began, erasing his takeoff mark. He adjusted, and was one of three jumpers tied for first at 7–7¾. They missed three times each at 7–8¾, and then a fourth time. The bar was lowered to 7–8, and Drouin cleared on his first attempt. When the two others
