Some of the young sprinters snickered when Bruny Surin laced up his running shoes and trotted around the track at Montreal's Claude Robillard Centre a few weeks ago.
They chuckled even harder when the 42-year-old former Canadian sprint star dragged out the starting blocks and proceeded to bend his well-worn body into them.
They weren't laughing when they saw how fast he ran.
Surin will make a competitive comeback of sorts Saturday when he tries to break the Canadian masters record in the 50 metres.
"The younger guys saw me and they were like, 'Um, Bruny . . . what are you doing?' They were making fun of me, saying 'You cannot do this.' But the funny thing is, after we took out the electronic timing, they were like, 'Oh (shoot), you still have it."'
Surin will be gunning for the Canadian masters indoor 50-metre record of 6.20 seconds (in the 40-45 age group) Saturday at McGill University, his first race since the 2002 Commonwealth Games.
He'll race 60 metres later this winter with the world masters record of 6.78 over that distance arguably within reach.
"I'm going to see for the first one how it goes," Surin said from Montreal on Monday. "I'd like to do three of four races, just for some challenges, but I'll see how fast my body can go."
Pretty fast, it seems. The two-time world indoor champion over 60 metres still owns the Canadian record of 6.45. His times over 30 metres show he could be on pace to run 6.75.
"Actually I was surprised at myself. I thought, `Oh really? I do that? Wow. OK,"' Surin said. "I'm very happy."
Surin, who ran the third leg on Canada's 4x100 relay team that won gold at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, was originally lured back to the track to try out his own athletic clothing line he launched earlier this year.
Through his company The Surin Group, he also has his own line of nutritional supplements -- Xistence -- and his sports agency that represents world silver medallist Priscilla Lopes-Schlieps, among others.
Surin realized he'd be a better example for his clients if he was in decent shape.
"For one year after I retired, I didn't exercise at all, ate junk food, after all those years of discipline," Surin said. "But now I cannot allow myself to not be in shape because I want to be true to myself. . . And I want to be representing what I'm selling."
A fit and trim dad that still chases athletic goals isn't too shabby an example for his daughters either. Kimberley-Ann, 15, and Katherine, 13, are both budding tennis stars, and they too laughed at first over their dad's return to the track.
"I train my daughters in their fitness and we were out doing sprints and they were calling me 'Pepe,' (French for grandpa) like an old guy," Surin said laughing. "They said, 'You cannot run faster than us.' But then they saw me run and I said, 'From now on, you"ll never call me Pepe again.'"
Surin has chronicled his progress through regular videos posted on Facebook, and has received plenty words of encouragement from former teammates and current sprinters, including Donovan Bailey's message: "SHOW DE YUTES."
Surin said, record or no record, it feels great to be back on the track, running fast again.
"I'm so lucky, I know the feeling when you're running that fast, it's like you're on another planet," he said. "Sometimes people ask me to try to explain that, but there's no way to explain that, it's crazy.
"When I'm at the gym, working with people or running with the youngsters, that's the place I feel most comfortable, or when I go to schools, talk to the kids and do exercises with that, that's the part I like the best of anything I do. That's what I want to do more and more, promote the sport in Quebec and Canada, that's my goal."
