David Johnson is ready to race at home

Victoria-based athlete gearing up for a blistering 400 metre event against his training partners at the 2022 Track Classic

By: Joshua Kozelj

David Johnson always dreamed of becoming a professional athlete. 

As a kid, growing up in Victoria, he played hockey, basketball, baseball, and football. Pretty much every sport you can name, Johnson would pick up the rules, play with the ball, stick, or bat, and feel excitement at the prospect of one day becoming a professional athlete. 

A professional athlete. 

Someone who gets paid to train, travel, and race around the world. Someone who’s day job isn’t to sit behind a computer screen from nine to five, but instead log hours in the gym. 

But he admits there was always a cloud lingering over that dream. 

Johnson, a graduate of Stelly’s Secondary School in Saanichton, was born with a visual impairment. As he got older, his vision got worse. 

It was hard to see the puck in hockey, or the ball in soccer, and when he was eight years old, Johnson was officially diagnosed with a degenerative eye condition. 

“I started to give up all these sports I was playing as a kid in middle school, in high school,” Johnson said over the phone from Victoria. 

“I always wanted to be a professional athlete, but I just knew I wouldn’t be able to because of my vision. Like, there’s no way I’d be able to play in the NHL or anything like that.”  

However, rather than feeling sorry for himself, Johnson switched his mindset and gravitated to sports that took less vision to compete. Around the age of 14, he took up track and field and never looked back. 

He’s won three national championships in the 400, owns a national record in the T12 400m classification, and made his international debut at the 2019 Para Pan American Games.  

And now, as he gears up for another track season this summer, he will be competing at the 2022 Victoria Track Classic, on the track he trained on as a young athlete, in front of friends and family. 

In less than a decade in the sport, Johnson has risen to become one of the best sprinters in the country. 

It was in 2017 when he first realized his potential in track. Johnson made the Junior World Para Championship for Canada, he was carded for the first time, and fully believed he could make his professional athlete dream a reality. 

One month before the World Para Junior Championships, though, he was diagnosed with type one diabetes and had to miss the competition. 

Although the diagnosis threw another wrench in his plans—like the many other obstacles he’s conquered—Johnson didn’t let it deter him from achieving his full potential. 

“After that, I learned how to be an athlete with type one, training got back on track and pretty much got me here now.” 

Although he’s starting to get better at expressing himself, Johnson admits that he isn’t someone who is the best at voicing his emotions or feelings. In our phone call in early May, I sense a bit of reservation in his voice. 

In high school, he struggled a lot with his visual impairment—especially as his classmates started to get older and train for their driving license. 

“That’s the age when everyone’s learning to drive and getting their licenses,” he says. “I realized that I'm never going to be able to drive… And just little things like that, kind of, they really got to me and I kept that inside.” 

As Johnson got more and more involved with track, he found running was his outlet. 

He could clear his head on the track. Smash a workout. Focus on nothing else but his breathing on a run. 

It’s easy to hear the passion in his voice when I ask about his weekly training schedule: a six day cycle that sounds like the equivalent of a full-time job. 

“Sure, yeah!” He replies. 

Aside from an off-day on Monday, Johnson spends two days a week in the gym, two on the track—with Saturday being the bigger session of the week—and does a long cross training workout on Sunday. 

Although Johnson’s primary event is the 400m, he’s aiming to be named to Team Canada’s Commonwealth Games team later this summer in the 100m—as there isn’t a 400m visually impaired classification at that games. 

He already snagged a personal best in the event this season, running 11.45 in Florida in the spring, and if he focuses on his speed work, Johnson isn’t ruling out the possibility of winning a medal in the Commonwealth 100m. 

“That’s my dream goal, and I think I’m pretty close,” he says. 

As for the buildup to the Commonwealth Games, Johnson will continue to run 400’s and race in Ontario and Paris before coming home to Victoria. 

At the Track Classic, Johnson will line up in the 400m with his Athletics Canada West Hub training partners Zac Gingras and Thomas Normandeau, a pair of fellow athletes who have also represented Canada at the international stage. 

While he gets pumped up competing with them in practice, he’s looking forward to putting it all on the line in what should be one of the Track Classic’s premier events. 

“We’re excited, this is our home track, we all have fun racing each other in practices, we’re always competing,” he said. 

When he was dreaming of becoming a professional athlete as a young boy, Johnson would often train at Centennial Stadium. 

Now, years later, he’s returning home with that childhood dream complete—and eager for so much more. 

“I kind of get that throwback feeling of like, ‘Oh I’m a kid again.’ I’m just excited to have fun back at the track I used to train at.”