Thunder Bay's Niko Dowhos hits the track at this week's Olympic trials
CBC
A Thunder Bay runner is hitting the track in Montreal this week in hopes of representing Canada at the Paris Olympics.
Niko Dowhos, 22, who's ranked 11th in Canada in the 100m dash, will be running in the 2024 Bell Track and Field Trials, which began Wednesday, and wrap up on June 30.
Dowhos's first race is on Friday, when he'll be up against the likes of Andre De Grasse, Aaron Brown, Brendon Rodney, and Jerome Blake.
Despite the competition, Dowhos said he's not feeling much in the way of pressure.
"You just do the best you can with what you have," he said during an interview earlier this week, prior to flying to Montreal. "You try your best, but that's really about it."
But, Dowhos admitted, he'll likely be feeling some nerves closer to his races.
"You will be anxious, and that's OK," he said. "That's part of the sport. And if you channel that, you'll do good."
"It can be pretty scary, for sure," Dowhos said. "There will be a lot of people there too, a lot of people in the stands. It's a big meet."
Dowhos, 22, has been running since he was in Grade 9 at Hammarskjold High School in Thunder Bay.
"We used to just play tag a lot, and one of my friends was like: 'You wanna join the track team?'" he said. "That's kind of how I started."
He continued that path when he enrolled at Lakehead University, where he runs with the Thunderwolves track and field team; Dowhos was named Lakehead's athlete of the year in 2023.
"He is obviously a pretty unique athlete in the sense that his strength is firing on all cylinders," said Joe McDonough, Dowhos's coach at Lakehead. "He has one gear, and that gear is 100 per cent, all out, as fast as he can."
"Unlike a lot of athletes, training him had some unique challenges," he said. "Because he's always firing at 100 per cent, he needs a lot of rest. He needs some time between workouts for his body to recover because everything he does, he goes all-in.
"It's a unique challenge for coaching for sure, but it's also really fun to watch him practice and work out with the team because he's doing everything at race pace, basically."
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