The recent World Championships in Berlin, Germany, was not so much about the Worlds’ athletes but more about a world-class athlete whose performance once again defied belief.
Usain Bolt, as he had done at the Beijing Olympic Games last year in China, once again made a major international track and field championships into his own personal fiefdom with three sensational bolts of sprinting.
In Berlin at the very stadium where the great Jesse Owens made a name for himself some 73 years ago, Bolt too was in a class all by himself, waltzing away from this year’s World Championships with three gold medals and two more world records.
At the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the six-foot, five-inches Bolt clocked a staggering 9.69 seconds in the 100 metres showboating and all towards the end of the race.
He also won gold medals in the 200m and the 4x100m men’s relay race.
In Berlin, he almost singlehandedly won the battle between the USA and Jamaica as to which nation owned the franchise for the production of the world’s fastest sprinters.
Before Beijing, Bolt had chiselled the 100m record down to 9.72 seconds.
In Berlin, he took 0.11 seconds off the Beijing record clocking 9.58 seconds minus the showboating.
Bolt is the Supreme Ruler, the King, the Czar of track and field.
He has a commanding presence and is not averse to celebrating the “Jamaican Way” at the end of an event.
In Berlin, he burst out of the blocks faster than a `Ben Johnson’ and surged through 100 and 200m with the power of a modern day locomotive.
By his feats, Bolt, the fastest man of the planet, now has the athletic world at his feet.
Future events will certainly reveal just how much faster he can run (if that is possible) and whether he will be able to do at 400m just what he has done at the 100 and 200m distances.
And if for one minute you think that Bolt would be the modern day Dr. Roger Banister (who became the first man to run a mile under four minutes) and become the first man to run the 100m under nine seconds forget it.
“I said 9.4. I think it will stop at 9.4 but you never know,” he told reporters in Berlin.
Contrary to belief, Bolt is not an overnight sprint sensation, shocking the world like a – bolt of lightning.
No! This `Reggae Boy’ came through the ranks competing at 200m and 400m while a youngster and fuelling comparisons with the great American Michael Johnson despite the differences in running techniques.
He had won a silver medal at the 2001 Carifta Games clocking 48.28 seconds and so talk of a 400m shot after Beijing was not idle conjecture.
But just who is Usain St. Leo Bolt.
He was born on August 21, 1986 to Jennifer and Wellesley Bolt.
The Bolt’s had two other children, Sadeeki (a boy) and Sherine (a girl) and Usain, like most Caribbean children played cricket and football in the streets of Trewlany.
He announced himself on the world stage at the 2002 World Junior Championships when he won a gold medal in the 200m becoming the youngest gold medal winner at the championships and he was only just starting.
At the 2004 Junior Carifta Games he became the first junior sprinter in the world to run the 200m under 20 seconds clocking 19.93 seconds.
Yet the world did not readily acknowledge the fact that they were witnessing a great in the making.
He participated at the 2004 Olympic Games without much success but by the time the Beijing Olympic Games came around Bolt was ready to take the world by storm.
And even though he broke the 100m record in Beijing it was Michael Johnson’s 200 metres record of 19.32s set at the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996 that was the defining moment of that games.
Bolt turned 22 a day after the 200m final in Beijing and turned 23 during the Berlin Worlds celebrating that milestone and the landmarks by signing autographs among other things.
But the Berlin Worlds will not only be remembered as the `Usain Bolt Show’ but also for the exploits of Ethiopian Kenenisa Bekele, Jamaican Shelly Ann Fraser, American LaShawn Merritt and South African Caster Semenya.
Bekele won the 10,000 meters and became the first person to achieve the 5000 and 10, 000m double at the World Championships.
The 18-year-old Semenya, who won the women’s 800m and was later tested to see is she was male or female might feel aggrieved that the IAAF did not see it fit to test Bolt to see if he was indeed human.
