“A lot of it doesn’t feel like real life.”
Savannah Sutherland’s fast feet have a knack for the track, and it doesn’t matter what kind.
She’s run in the dust of small-town Saskatchewan ovals with the gopher holes filled in, and on fancy global surfaces where the world’s fastest athletes congregate.
Sutherland hails from the village of Borden, which at the last census had 281 residents. She’s the fastest person there, and spreads the speed around while keeping folks back home close to her heart.
“I carry Borden with me wherever I go, and this will be no different,” says the 20-year-old athlete, who is preparing to take her little village to Paris, where she’ll represent Canada in the 400-metre hurdles at the Olympic Games.
Sutherland’s rise was explosively fast, and sometimes she still can’t believe it happened the way it did.
She was 12, and unknown, when coach Lee Wolfater noticed her at a Legion track camp in Saskatoon. A teacher from nearby Langham named Terry Chalifour had suggested she attend the camp after watching her run. When Sutherland got there, she beat some awfully fast girls.
“Good race!” Wolfater remembers calling to her, across the track. “What’s your name?”
“Savannah!”
“Where you from?”
“Borden!”
In the ensuing eight years she put on her first pair of track spikes, and then played the part of a rocket, shooting up and out — from Borden, to Saskatoon, to the University of Michigan, to the Olympics later this month in Paris.
She’s the world’s seventh-ranked 400-m hurdler, and is the youngest athlete in the top 10.
How young is she?
“We knew in high school that she was going to go to the Olympics. We could tell,” says Kira Comfort, who placed second to Sutherland in that hurdles race — posting a 12.19 time to Sutherland’s provincial-record 11.36.
“Everyone knew she was one step ahead of everyone else.”
Comfort, who now competes in track with the University of Saskatchewan Huskies, also played volleyball against Sutherland.
“It was the exact same thing,” she says. “She was one of the big forces on her volleyball team.”
Sutherland commuted nearly 45 minutes every day from Borden to Saskatoon’s Bishop Mahoney during her last two years of high school, which moved her close to bigger-city track facilities and her coaches. Local and provincial track seasons were wiped out by COVID-19 both years, leaving wide open the question of just how thoroughly she would have rewritten the record books here.
“It almost feels like a fever dream,” Sutherland said last week from Ann Arbor, Mich., where she’s wrapped up her third year of school and remains deep in training. “A lot of it doesn’t feel like real life, and I’ve had a little bit of trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that this is actually happening to me, you know?
“I’ve spent the last eight years looking up to people that are going to the Olympics, and having the Olympics as the big-picture goal. But I never really stopped to think about what’s going to actually happen, or what it’s going to feel like once that goal is accomplished. The fact that it’s now here is a little bit surreal.
“Also, just receiving so much support from everybody — Michigan fans, people from Saskatchewan, people from Borden. It’s been overwhelming and so encouraging.”
Local folks erected a big and colourful sign outside the village recently, complete with Olympic rings, for highway passersby to see.
GO FOR GOLD!
TO BORDEN’S
SAVANNAH SUTHERLAND
400M
OLYMPIC HURDLES
Sutherland’s parents, who hadn’t known the sign was going up, took a photo and texted it to her in Michigan. It meant something.
“It doesn’t matter if I cross the finish line in first or in last, I know I have the whole town of Borden behind me,” she says. “That means everything. On days where it’s a little bit harder to motivate yourself to go to the track and get a lift in or get a practice in, they’re motivating me and pushing me. I think about them. It pushes me to get out of my comfort zone and continue working hard, because not only am I representing myself, but I’m representing all of them.”
Sutherland mirrors Borden’s historic determination. They earned village status in 1907, and the Saskatoon Phenix reported that same year that the place had its own hurdles to leap:
“The way in which the town had sprung into existence was nothing short of a marvel, for while 12 months ago, there was nothing but wild prairie and scarcely enough wheat grown to feed a gopher, now the town could boast of two elevators with a prospect of a third, three hotels, barns, stores and lumber yard, and other buildings now in progress, while shipments of wheat had reached 150,000 bushels for last season.”
More than a century later, Sutherland has built her own treasure store. Sure, she boasts world-class athleticism, but she’s also whip-smart — currently in pre-med at Michigan, with plans to become an oncologist. She’s had family members with cancer, and she knows what it’s like to go through it. She wants to help.
On the track, she’s always been special, but Sutherland had no designs on running hurdles at first — no desire to mix her extraordinary running ability with the repetitive leaping that makes up a hurdles race.
Men and women have jumped over barriers, sometimes in the interest of competition, for as long as we’ve had legs. Hurdling is co-ordination, aggression, speed, cadence. Disasters happen quickly, tangles of wood, metal and limb when a bar is clipped.
One day, when Sutherland was a fast-flying midget athlete, her coach — Wolfater — asked if she’d be interested in trying hurdles. She said no.
“He said we would run two meets, and if it didn’t go well, I never had to do it again,” she says. “I ended up winning. So we ended up doing it again, and again, and again. That’s kind of how I got here.
“It takes a special kind of person to be able to run at an obstacle full speed, and try to get over it. It can be a little bit daunting, and it takes a very brave person sometimes to just hurdle their body at this immobile object. That was a little bit scary at first — I didn’t know how co-ordinated I was, or if I would even be able to get over the thing.”
We now know how that turned out.
* * * * *
Sutherland’s raw athletic ability was on display from her youngest, tiniest days. Her father, Scott Sutherland, says athleticism was evident when she played around the house and yard, and with the way she learned how to ride a bike — quickly, easily, without fuss.
“Even in the little meets in elementary school, doing the one lap around the track, she’d be half a lap ahead of most of the kids,” he says. “It didn’t matter if they were boys or girls, it was the same thing.”
Sutherland didn’t have the same early training opportunities as many precocious young talents, and she retained some of that prairie-village innocence even as she progressed from local to international.
“(The Borden track) is basically a field by the school that they would draw chalk lines on, and that was what we would call a track. They’d fill in the gopher holes every so often,” she says.
“I grew up running on makeshift dirt tracks, and now I’m running in stadiums with thousands and thousands of people watching. It’s a little bit overwhelming and very humbling at times, and it still takes my breath away every time I walk into one of those stadiums. Even here at Michigan — we have a beautiful indoor facility and I’m so grateful for all the resources we have here. We’re very spoiled at times.
Sutherland’s fast climb at Michigan coincides with the arrival of coach Steven Rajewsky, who coached men’s sprints there starting in 2013. He shifted to sprints and hurdles for both men and women prior to Sutherland’s second season, and has worked extensively with her. He’s a small-town guy himself — hails from Blue Earth, Minn. — and he gets what makes her tick.
“There’s a little bit of aw-shucks,” Rajewsky says. “She’s not a kid I’ve ever felt relished the attention. But her values allow her to be grateful for it. She doesn’t have a me-me-me mentality. She appreciates the attention, she appreciates some of the fanfare, but at the same time, she’s like, ‘Hey; I’m just going to practise. I’m doing my workout. I’m running over these hurdles.’ ”
Rajewsky will travel with her to Paris in a coaching capacity, and will help her prepare in real time for the biggest event of her life. Sutherland says it’s a comfortable thing, to have him there.
“One thing I’ve found the last two years: When the lights come on, she’s not afraid to compete,” Rajewsky says. “Up to five minutes before, she may not be sure. But when the commands are given — on your marks — and the gun goes off … I’m not saying she’s going to win every time, but she’s going to compete. And those are some things you can’t always teach.
“She isn’t afraid of the moment, and that’s a quality in itself. She’s a competitor. As a coach, you want people that aren’t afraid to line up and athletes who aren’t afraid to compete.”
These Olympics, of course, are completely different than anything she’s tried before. She ran at her first senior world championship last year, and says it’s “like dipping my toe in the water before the Olympics. I feel like that’s a full dive, head-first.”
Sutherland notes that it’s been just five years since she ran that provincial junior high-school track meet in Moose Jaw, breaking three longstanding provincial records in the process.
“Eight years ago,” she adds, “was when I had my first official track meet, right before the Rio Olympics — I think it was the week before. I remember watching the Rio Olympics on TV, the track and field events, and thinking ‘Wow, that is so impressive. I want to be an Olympian one day.’
“And it’s kind of hard, you know? You keep chasing new goals as you get better and better, and I had a moment the last couple of weeks where I took a step back, and looked at how far I had come. It was really surprising, even as I’m doing it. It’s crazy to think about where I started, and how I ended up here.”
Back in Borden, her parents watch keenly, and attend as many big meets as they can. They’re traveling to Paris for the Olympics. They, more than anybody, have watched her trajectory, and the way it’s taken her to impossible places and impossible events.
“I can’t put into words the effort that kid puts into everything she does,” says Scott Sutherland. “But I can tell you that to get where she’s going … it’s a herculean effort.
“We’re just along for the ride with all this,” he adds, “and enjoying every minute of it. It’s very special, and it’s her dream. She told me last year that her goal was to make it to the Olympics. Honestly, I don’t know if she’ll continue on with it, whether she’ll focus on her studies, or where she’ll go after this. That box is checked now, and I don’t know where the future will lead her.”
Sutherland is asked about that, and she says it’s a conversation better left for a future day.
“Right now, I’m just focusing on the Olympics this summer and coming back for my senior year,” she said. “Once I finish my undergraduate degree, we’ll have to re-evaluate some things. We will see. It’s up in the air right now.”
All that’s left now, at least for those watching at home, is what happens next, in Paris, at the Olympics. Scott Sutherland says with a chuckle that there’s “going to be a few watch parties” in Borden while he and wife Sonia spectate from up close.
There’s a chance Sutherland could also run the 4X400 relay for Canada, but that remains to be seen. She’ll definitely be there at the hurdles, taking this first Olympic experience as far as she can.
“Based on how her season has been,” says Rajewsky, “a realistic goal is to make the Olympic final. That being said, it’s not a given or anything easy.
“Can she (run a personal best) and can she finish higher than just making the final? Yes. You never know what can happen in a hurdle race. Right now, in that event, there’s a clear No. 1 and a clear No. 2 in the world, in (American) Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and (Netherlands) Femke Bol. But after that, it’s a bunch of women who are all within probably half a second of each other.
“Her being the competitor she is, her having the strength she does, she can put herself in that mix. Obviously it would be a spectacular opportunity for her to win a medal at the Games, and I feel like she can finish anywhere from a medal position to being in the final. And for a 20-year-old, where she’s at right now, I think that would be a heck of a finish to the season. But you never know — hurdles get hit, patterns get wonky, things happen. But if she’s on her game, there’s going to be a great opportunity for her to make the final. And then we’ll see what happens.”
Sutherland placed second in the NCAA final this past season, one spot below what she accomplished in 2023, despite running what was then the world’s fourth-fastest time this year. The sport can be frustrating.
“It’s a little bit scary to put a number out there, to put a (placing) out there,” she says when asked what she wants to accomplish in Paris. “I would love to make the final. I can’t predict how the other people are going to run, or stop them from running their own times. There’s no defence in track. All I can do is prepare as best as possible, and put my best race forward. If I’m able to put the race together that I think I’m capable of, then I think I can be in the conversations of making the final and things like that. I hope to put that race together, and to be in those conversations.”
Kira Comfort, who placed second to Sutherland in the provincial 80-m hurdles those five short years ago, says she’ll view the Olympics with greater-than-normal interest.
“We’ve always watched the Olympics,” she says. “But I feel like it’s different when you know someone going.”
Sutherland’s dad, meanwhile, is proud. He likes that she carries Borden with her when she competes, and that the village will be in her thoughts while she prepares to run under the Olympic spotlight.
And, of course, he deeply appreciates her being there. He watched her churn up a dirt track in Borden not too long ago, and now he’s about to see his kid walk into an Olympic stadium, with cameras everywhere and the running surface picture perfect, groomed for the world’s fastest hurdlers.
“I learned a long time ago never to count her out,” says Scott Sutherland.
“The movie Seabiscuit, if you’ve ever watched that, she’s the underdog. When they come up beside her, and she sees them, that’s kind of her thing. She thrives off the big meets. So no matter what she does, she won’t surprise me. If she finishes 20th in this Olympics, I’m still just as proud of her. But I wouldn’t be surprised if something special happened, too.”