The end of a dream run: A tribute to Usain Bolt
"And a fair start, Asafa Powell, Usain Bolt is also out well.
Here they come down the track.
USAIN BOLT!
SPRINTING AHEAD, WINNING BY DAYLIGHT!"
—Tom Hammond, NBC Sports, with the call for the men's 100 metres final at the 2008 Summer Olympics.
He was good. Pretty good. One of the contenders for the gold. That was all we, the naive general public - those, who didn’t hang around at athletics meets around the world, knew about him. And that was all we needed to know, really.
It's amazing how the chief attraction of the track and field section of the Olympic Games boils down to that one single race - the 100m finals. Those short sub-10 seconds that crown you the fastest man on the planet. A heavy crown to wear too.
But the pundits knew otherwise. They had seen him improve through the years. The 6'5" tall, nimble kid from Jamaica with natural athletic ability and a penchant for pranks and mischief, had been a common face at the World Junior meets and also had the medals to show for it. They expected nothing less than a close finish from him. He was the world-record holder, after all. But what they got, was a glimpse of the impossible.
Initially starting out as a 400m sprinter, and concentrating in the 200m race, Bolt trudged along on his journey. Other than a few injuries pausing his career now and then, he was looking set for a promising career of a typical world-class athlete, who all of us have seen over the years.
But then, at the IAAF World Cup in Athens, Greece, Bolt began to twitch to run the 100m. He was already doing well at 200m, but his coach, Glen Mills, remained adamant. But one time, he relented, and Bolt produced a gold-winning run of 10.03s, feeding his enthusiasm.
Yet, he did not run the 100m at the 2007 Osaka World Championships, instead, coming a close second to USA’s Tyson Gay at the 200m. He kept quiet and continued work on his technique at the shorter event and honed his skills.
It is, in fact, to be noted, that Bolt never possessed the physique of a typical sprinter by the standards set then. He was a lanky fellow without a lot of muscle, relying on his naturally large stride length to put him through. The likes of Tyson Gay, his countryman Asafa Powell (the face of Jamaican sprinting at that point) had a sturdier built. But after the announcement of his intention to run both the 100m and 200m at the Bird’s Nest in Beijing, Bolt got down to the science of it and began to train in earnest.
Having promised himself, due to a juvenile mishap early in his career, never to succumb to pre-race jitters, Bolt was carefree as he lined up for the finals. He was slow starting out from the blocks, picking up pace and reaching top speed around the 50m. He held top speed till around the 80m mark. Then, incredibly, he slowed down!
This is the part of the video footage that shows him thumping his chest and gesturing in victory, a few meters from the finish line. With a run time of 9.69 seconds, he was, figuratively, days ahead of the silver medalist. The Phenomenon had arrived. Lightning had struck. The days of limited human capacity to run sub-9.7s were a thing of the past. Bolt had shattered the glass ceiling.
Come 2009, he would cut out his premature celebration, and produce a run of 9.58s at the Berlin World Championships.
The Greatest Ever.
Ato Boldon is a four-time Olympic medalist for Trinidad and Tobago and works for NBC Track and Field. In his words, "Jesse Owens was history's most important sprinter, for obvious reasons. Carl Lewis made it profitable to be a sprinter. He sort of dragged track and field kicking and screaming into the professional era. But Usain Bolt is the greatest sprinter of all time. And I think he has been maybe the best thing that has happened to this sport in many generations."
Saturday in London, Jamaican Usain Bolt will run a final 100 meters at track and field's World Championships. A week later, after the 4x100m relay final, he says he'll retire. Bolt will leave with an eye-popping highlight reel that includes eight Olympic gold medals over the past three summer games. Having clinched every event gold other than the 2011 Daegu, where he was disqualified due to a false start, he has literally won everything there is to win. And this statement can be made about a chosen handful of professional sportspersons, let alone athletes.
Coming into London following a subpar season (by his standards) that sees him as the sixth fastest person in the world, Bolt is unworried, "If I show up at a championship, I'm confident. I'm fully ready to go."
The prelude to his perfect swansong got off to a shaky start on Friday, as he ran the qualifiers for the semi-finals. He was slower off the blocks than the usual, later attributing it to the lack of strength in the blocks. He won easily however, as expected. But in order to paint the perfect end of a dream run, he would have to shake off these slip-ups. Time would not be so forgiving in the finals.
A year back, in Rio, Bolt was asked about growing up in rural Jamaica, playing cricket, football and athletics, whether he already had big dreams. His reply, speaks a lot about his story and the attitude he brings to the track.
"I just started out in athletics and I was really good and I just continued," Bolt said. "Over the years, I started making goals because I started getting better and I just continued running and pushing myself and working hard until ... here I am."
Here. I. Am.