Mumbai, Jan. 16 -- A video montage displays one of the many famous moments to have been played out in Olympic history. Andre De Grasse is off the blocks quickly, but is soon overtaken by the great Usain Bolt. But in a late surge, the young Canadian tries to catch up with the reigning World and Olympic champion. The race - the semi-final of the men's 200m event at the 2016 Rio Olympics - ends with the duo sharing a smile as they cross the finish line. "I had to laugh in that moment," De Grasse said on the video. "I knew I could beat him one day." De Grasse, the daring 21-year-old who challenged Bolt, was considered - even by the Jamaican - to be the eight-time Olympic gold medallist's heir apparent. Injuries prevented him from reaching those heights. Yet De Grasse, the event ambassador at the Mumbai Marathon this Sunday, is still a seven-time Olympic medallist, including golds in the 200m event (Tokyo 2020) and 4x100m relay (Paris 2024). That endearing memory from nearly a decade ago precedes him wherever he goes. And he explained that the confidence came through a familiarity he achieved with Bolt. "I had raced him a year prior at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing," De Grasse, 31, told the media on Thursday. "I felt really good about myself, I felt like I belonged. And during that (200m semi-final), I looked around and didn't see anybody near us. It was just me and him." Much was expected of him. But in 2017, the first in a series of hamstring injuries struck and he was forced to sit out of most of the next two seasons. By 2019 though, he started to claw his way back onto the circuit and became the first 200m Olympic champion in the post-Bolt era. Not a bad journey for someone who considered athletics as a third-choice sport. He started off playing football but soon switched over to basketball before eventually moving onto the athletics track when he was 16 - more so as a result of some friendly banter. The story goes that De Grasse was joking around with a friend about being a faster runner, only to be invited to an upcoming track meet. "I went there, and I had never seen anything like it," he recalled. "People were doing all these drills, and I had no idea what I was doing. I ended up borrowing a pair of spikes, I didn't use any starting blocks and I was wearing basketball shorts. And I ended up winning the race at about 10.92 seconds." That run caught the attention of Tony Sharpe, an athletics coach who had won bronze in the relay event at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Coincidentally, while he does a little sight-seeing in Mumbai, De Grasse's eyes are set on Los Angeles, for the 2028 Olympics. But he recognises that he now races in a different era of sprinting, where he has to face more high-profile opponents than just worry about Bolt. "Now the track is different, the spikes are different. More people are consistent in running sub-10 (100m) and sub-20 (200m) than before." But the man once considered Bolt's heir apparent cannot be left out of the conversation. De Grasse has, after all, proven his place in the highest echelons of the sport....