McMillan LLP is pleased to present our ongoing podcast series "Black History, Black Futures," as part of our Black History Month commemoration.
In this episode, Paul Davis, Partner in our Capital Markets & Securities and Mergers & Acquisitions groups, spoke with Canadian Olympic gold medalist Jerome Blake on the importance of mentorship in his pathway to success.
Transcript
Paul Davis: I am Paul Davis, a Partner of McMillan and the head of our Capital Markets and M&A practice. I'm here with Jerome Blake, who's famous for being a member of the 4×100 relay team that won gold at the 2024 Olympics. He was also a member of the 2020 Olympic silver medalist team and the 2022 World Championship relay team. So welcome, Jerome, glad to have you with us.
Jerome Blake: Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me.
Paul Davis: So everyone will want to know the key question, which is, you know, it was a great upset. It was a great win. How has it impacted you and how do you guys get prepared for that?
Jerome Blake: Honestly, it's one of those things where you can only do so much practice and preparation for something like that because at the end of the day, the practice and the preparations, you do all of that, but at the end of the day, you still have to go in the stadium with thousands of people and actually do everything that you've been working on at practice. So I think that's probably the most challenging part of it. And then actually executing that to the team. And the team who makes the least mistakes usually is the team that wins, right? It's not in a sense who's the fastest and — or none of that. Because people make mistakes and it's four people. So your faith is in one person's hand and then it goes to the next person's hand. So it's out of your hands once you do your part. So in a sense, you do your part to the best of your ability and just rely on the people that you've been working with and trust them. And if you trust the process of that, I think everything's going to work out fine.
Paul Davis: Good. So I noticed that, like me, you were born in Jamaica?
Jerome Blake: Right.
Paul Davis: Can you tell us the path that led you here?
Jerome Blake: Yeah, for sure. It was actually between Canada or the UK because my dad's British and my mom moved to Canada. So when we were younger, I think– I want to say it was around January of 2013. Me and my two brothers got asked the same question: Where would you rather live — Canada or the UK? And growing up in Jamaica, I mean, you hear about the UK. But you hear about Toronto all the time, you know? So I was like, I want to go to Canada and I think at that point I was really into sports as well. I had to do a research paper and I found out about Donovan Bailey and Ben Johnson and, and that's when I was like, okay, I want to go to Canada because Canada is where all the fast Jamaicans go, and that's where they go to run fast. I was like, I'm going to Canada.
So when I moved here, it was 2013. I think it was around July — July 30th, 2013 — and it was super fun. I moved to Kelowna and it was a very new thing and my mom would show us around the city but the one thing they never prepared us for was October. [laughs] So I was getting cold and I was like, Oh man, like, I don't know if I can do this and January came, it starts snowing. I was like, Oh man, like, I don't know if I can do this. But I think that the thing about it though, that is a part of my journey — a big part of it. Because I feel like just leaving something that you've grown up on– you grew up in a place where everyone you know is all your cousins. So everyone you know is all family members. And then you move to a place where the only people you know is people in your house. So you have to try to put yourself out there in a different situation, make friends and implement yourself in a community that you don't really know, and try to find people around the city in the community, try to find your own little community again that you had before. So I think that was probably the toughest part.
Paul Davis: Okay. When you think about where you are now, what you've achieved, what are sort of one of the two sort of key obstacles or hindrances or just difficulties you had to overcome?
Jerome Blake: I think I've overcome a lot, but I wouldn't say that — in a sense, like, I try to — my story is not a sad one, you know? I try to tell it's a happy story because, I mean, yes, I've overcome — I think everything that I overcome was self-inflicted. Because when you're really young and you're very talented, it's one of those things where you don't really see your talent. Other people see it before you even do. So I think I wouldn't work as hard as everybody else because I was better than everybody else around me. So that's the only thing I could really see is I'm better than everybody here and I don't really need to practice. So I felt I need to do some– I had a lot of growing up to do and I think just having the friends I have now, when I was younger, they really put me in a position and let me understand, okay, you're the most talented one out of all of us. We're not going to let you keep messing up like this. You're going to have to pay attention more to what you're doing and the fact that, you know, I started realizing that, I was like, okay, you're really talented. So you really need to put your best foot forward and represent. You're not just representing you anymore. Your friends and all these people are putting their trust in you. You actually have to work hard at this. So I think that and then there's little injuries. That's pretty much it. And I think moving to a place where nobody really understand you and you have to find a community and find people you can rely on and I think that's what I did. For me it's this lady named Pat. Like I'll never stop talking about her. She's like my second mom in a sense, like she's done so much for me. She was my first coach I've ever met in Canada and I remember she used to come to my house and wake me up from the bed because I wouldn't go to practice. Like, she literally come to the house, in my room: "Get out of bed, time for practice". And it's kind of funny and now we look back and laugh at it. Like even in 2016, we're watching the 2016 Olympics at our house and she told me — she's like, "Don't worry, you're going to be in Tokyo in four years." But I laughed at her. I was like, "Hmmm yeah, all right, I don't think that's possible." And then four years later, I was at the Olympics running for a medal.
Paul Davis: So that's your mentor or the person who instilled confidence in you?
Jerome Blake: Yeah.
Paul Davis: You know, I always say to our lawyers here that to be successful you need a mentor, a champion, and I assume that's the same with athletics and the other members of your team too.
Jerome Blake: Yeah, it's the same thing because we are all young at one point, right? And I'm a very young athlete who is very talented at something or just somebody who, in a sense, like stuff comes to them easy. You don't tend to take it as serious as you really should when you're younger. And I think that's the thing I really needed. I needed a mentor, someone who's going to point me in the right direction, who said, "Jerome, you need to do these two things today and don't worry about tomorrow." And I think that's kind of what helped me a lot and just like, just being put in situations where I actually — you also — this is also the thing I've learned: You can teach somebody so much, but you also have to let them do it themselves. People have to make mistakes in life for you to learn. And I think for me, it's just like not doing everything I need to do and getting beat up on in competitions and I think that's what made me very upset. Okay, I have to train. I can't just, you know, not practice and then expect I'm going to win. So I think just as you get older and as you mature, like you start realizing you need to take the proper steps to put yourself in the best position to win.
Paul Davis: You mentioned that you're getting older. So I think you turned 30 this year. The magical age of 30.
Jerome Blake: Oh I'm still a young man at heart though.
Paul Davis: Still a young man at heart. Have you thought about what comes after running?
Jerome Blake: Yeah. Yeah I've thought about it quite a bit, actually, and I know for a fact I'm... This is not... I tend to use a statement in a sense like, the more you think about what you've got to do after, the more you check out of what you have to do now. So for me, I'm not really thinking about what I'm going to do after, but more or less, I'm putting myself in a position that's going to help me for the next step, the next thing I do. And the first steps I take was like, I started a charity. I started doing different things in the community that, you know, the people I need to help me once I finish. I've become very close with them. I've become friends with city council members, the mayor, just put myself in a position where I know once I finish doing this, I can say, "Hey, I'm trying to do this, how can you help me?" And of course I know I'm very good at other things and of course I'm going to pursue other things, but it just requires this at the moment, which is sports require a certain level of focus and attention to it that you can't really split yourself in a sense. You can't split your time. You can work and do other stuff, but it's also one of those things where athletics is a very jealous lady. It's like she doesn't like when you split yourself and try and pay attention to other things. So you have to be very present, let's just say. So, yeah.
Paul Davis: Right. So you have to be fully committed to what you're doing now to be successful.
Jerome Blake: Yes. You 100% have to be. Because it's one of those things where you can work very hard on the track but if your recovery doesn't match your work on the track, you're going to be off-balanced, right? Because the amount of work that you do on a track everyday and in the gym, you also have to do just not the same amount, but enough recovery stuff to put yourself in a good position to go do the same thing the next day. Because our bodies aren't necessarily made to be running as fast as we are running and the amount of stress and strain it puts you put on your body. I mean it's not naturally made to do that. It's one of those things where you're actually forcing yourself to do something that it's not physically able to do without force and, you know, applied science. But you have to put your heart and your mind into it. And it's one of those things where you have to be 100% there. You can't be 50-50 anywhere else.
Paul Davis: Right. So what would the nearly 30-year old Jerome say to the younger Jerome at like 12 or 13 that would have made a difference to the current Jerome? Like is there some advice over the years that would have helped a younger Jerome be even more successful?
Jerome Blake: You know what? No! And why I said no is it's not to look back because I think everyone has their own path, right? And the way you come up and the way you achieve stuff, I think everyone's path is very unique. So maybe all the stuff I did when I was younger, I probably needed to do that to get to where I'm at now because I look at it like this, right? Maybe, let's just say if I take other stuff very seriously, maybe I wouldn't be as good as I am at athletics now. Maybe if I pursued playing cricket more, maybe I'll be a cricket player, you know? So it's certain things that I tend not to really think about too much because I don't know what would have happened. And it's like, in a sense it's like a, it messes with your brain how you think about stuff. So I try not to really think about it. But the one thing I would say, though, is I feel like I've achieved a lot more than I thought I would have. That's the one thing I would definitely tell, you know, if I could go back in time and said, tell younger Jerome: Don't worry about it. You'll achieve really cool things.
Paul Davis: That's good, that's good. In your position, I got to imagine young boys of color approach you for guidance or mentorship and it may be overwhelming. How does that play out from your perspective? How do you try to guide and help them?
Jerome Blake: For me, I think it's important because somebody helped me, right? Not just my mom, not just family, but Pat and Ben, Wilfred, Stephen, all these people. All these names are all these people. They all poured into me and for me, my thing now is giving back to my community in whatever way, whatever capacity I can. So that's part a reason why I started a charity. Things that we can reach more people instead of like just if one person reached out, great, you can get to one person. But if you have something that's big enough that spreads that bond behind your community and further, it's one of those things where you can reach more people and for me, it's just like, try to mentor as much people as I can and let them know, like, Hey, it doesn't matter your circumstances, it doesn't matter where you where you are. Like, we're in a day and age where anything is possible. All you need is faith and trust and believe in what you're doing and I think anything is possible.
Paul Davis: Okay. So again I give you the chance to plug your charity. So tell us a bit about your charity and what it does.
Jerome Blake: Yeah. There's –well technically there's actually more than one. One is called Rising Star. So in a sense, it's a foundation that me, Wilfred and a couple other friends, we started this a few years back with giving back to the community in Winnipeg and also in Kelowna, where I grew up. We try to go into very small communities where there's people of color and minority people and try to get them involved in different sports and we have different sports days. And you have an athlete like myself going back and hanging out with all those athletes, bring my medals and just letting them understand that, like, Hey, I'm from where you're from too and here I am. And I think it's one of those things where, like, you see people on television all the time, but you never really get to meet them.
So for me, the most important thing for me is making sure I'm in my community and not just vocally but actually physically, giving back to my community in different ways. So that's one. And then the next one, we're just starting that now. It's called On Your Mark. It's almost finished. We're trying to — basically that one would definitely focus on trying to develop sports and different... in a sense, different opportunities for people. It doesn't matter– I think for me it doesn't really matter where you're from and what your circumstances are. If you want to pursue something and if we can put you in the right position and give you the right guidance to do that, that's definitely what we're trying to do with the On Your Mark society. So that's definitely something we're trying to develop and try to get – I feel like in Canada, we have all the resources. We have, of course, a lot of finances as well in different communities so I think it's really cool to advocate for more high performance centers and places where kids can go to really pursue whatever sport, whatever thing they want to pursue. I think it's one of those things where if you have stuff like that, buildings or places where they can go and you have mentors that come in, people they see on television all the time, coming in person to actually spend a day and have a conversation with them. I think that can be more impactful than just sending a quick message and that's the thing for me, it's just being there physically, in person, is more important than vocally.
Paul Davis: So are you preparing for the — what's the next track event?
Jerome Blake: We have an upcoming season right now. So we're preparing for the 2025 track and field season. We have World Relays in... Oh, I can't remember... I think it's in April. I think it's at early April. It's in China. And then we have World Championships in Tokyo in the same stadium where we won the Olympic silver. So definitely looking forward to that to, you know, go out there and continue to develop and grow as an individual athlete. And you know, together with my guys on the relay team.
Paul Davis: Okay. Any other parting words of wisdom you want to give me and our firm?
Jerome Blake: I just think everyone should just keep doing their thing. Keep working hard, keep focusing on themselves and definitely, you know, 2025 is a year of growth. So just focus on that and that's the most important thing.
Paul Davis:Okay.
Jerome Blake: And I'm not a lawyer, but if you're looking for someone who can talk, take me to court.
Paul Davis:[laughs] We will keep that in mind. We'll keep that in mind. Thank you, Jerome. It was great talking to you and wish you the best of luck in the new– in the 2025 track season, and we'll be watching.
Jerome Blake: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
The foregoing provides only an overview and does not constitute legal advice. Readers are cautioned against making any decisions based on this material alone. Rather, specific legal advice should be obtained.
© McMillan LLP 2025
