knight

With so few competitions available in 2020 and early 2021, Justyn Knight tried using a new mindset: try to win every race. It definitely worked, helping propel him to an undefeated indoor season in both 2020 and 2021, adding up to a six-race win streak. He even set a new indoor Canadian record in the 1,500 metres (3:36.13) along the way.

Then, when outdoor competition returned in the lead-up to Tokyo, Knight ran a personal best in the 1,500 metres in May, dipping under the Olympic Qualifying Standard for that event. He already had the standard for the 5,000 metres on his resume, running 13:09.76 at the Diamond League event in June 2019.

Knight has represented Canada in the 5,000 metres at the past two World Championships, placing 10th in 2019 in Doha, Qatar, and ninth in London in 2017. Both results gave Canada two Top 10 finishers, as Mohammed Ahmed took bronze in 2019 and sixth in 2017.

He wrapped up his 2018 season with a silver-medal performance at the Canadian Track & Field Championships, crossing the finish line 0.47 seconds behind Ahmed who he battled with for the duration of the 12.5-lap race, and a bronze medal on home soil at the NACAC Championships in front of family and friends.

Known for his devastating finishing kick, Knight closed out his senior year at Syracuse University in style. For starters, Knight won the NCAA Div. 1 Cross Country Championships in November 2018, the first individual men’s cross country national championship in Syracuse history.

Knight capped his collegiate career by winning the 5,000 metres at the NCAA Div. 1 Indoor Championships in March, followed by a second-place finish at the same distance at the NCAA outdoor championships in June. Knight finished his career at Syracuse with 15 Atlantic Coast Conference titles (10 individual, five team) as he helped lift a school known as a basketball and lacrosse powerhouse up amongst the elite schools in U.S. college track and field.

It’s an extraordinary college resume, by any measure. It’s especially so for a student athlete who won the first cross-country race he entered only after his Grade 10 teacher at St. Michael’s College School in Toronto suggested Knight could attain a higher phys-ed mark if he produced a strong showing in the five-kilometre event.

Over the course of his career, Knight has also demonstrated his versatility, competing and winning in distances from 800 to 10,000 metres. At the 2016 Canadian Track & Field Championships in Edmonton, Knight placed second in the 1,500 metres, for example.

In February 2017 at the famed Millrose Games in New York City, the then 21-year-old Knight, the only collegian in a 12-man field, placed second in the 3,000 metres in a time of 7:45.3, 37-100ths of a second behind Olympian Shadrick Kipchirchir of Kenya.

In June 2016, as a 19-year-old, Knight beat Galen Rupp, the U.S. Olympian and 10,000-metre silver medallist at London 2012, in a 5,000-metre race in Portland, Ore. Knight’s time of 13:26.36 was just 1.36 seconds off the Canadian Olympic Standard.

Riding high on strong results during the past two shortened seasons, Knight has shown that he can be in the mix with the fastest in the world.