A triple-double sounds more like an ice-cream order than the summary of a sprinter’s Olympic career – but that is what Usain Bolt achieved two nights ago, shortly after the evening drizzle eased up in Rio. Stomping round the bend in the 200m men’s final and gritting teeth as he moved away from the rest of the field to rebuff a slight headwind, the big man was all business as he surpassed this milestone. Even when victory was assured he remained unusually restrained, as though the full magnitude of the achievement had finally dawned on him.
With fractionally slower times at each games, Usain Bolt has dominated the sprint world for the last eight years, and he has done so with a grace and humour that are vanishingly rare in the world of professional athletics. The jesting ease with which he remained the “fastest man alive” – perhaps the most coveted title in the athletic world – will not be matched in our lifetimes. With his sixth individual gold medal he enters a pantheon that includes athletes who transcended sport and became living symbols of principled excellence, alongside men like Jesse Owens, Muhammad Ali and the now, sadly, forgotten Emil Zátopek. (A triple gold medalist at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, Zátopek’s was penalized for daring to support democratic elements in the Communist party during the 1968 Prague Spring; for this he was kicked out of the Czechoslovak army and forced to collect trash and labour in a uranium mine.) While maintaining a zen-like focus on his sprinting Bolt also played a key role in keeping track and field relevant during a series of potentially crippling scandals. Throughout these crises Bolt’s charisma and his integrity were almost as important as his speed.
There are many reasons to be thankful for Bolt’s achievement, and more than a few to be grateful that he wasn’t better at other sports. Cricket was his first love and he harboured hopes of being a high jumper and soccer player. Success in any of these would likely have condemned him to obscurity; an outlandishly athletic player marooned in an underachieving team. Sprinting offered the only realistic chance for him to become a global brand, and in due course an iconic Olympian. It also allowed him to fully express an easygoing and thoroughly West Indian charm as he established himself as the greatest sprinter of all time.
The early Bolt was impishly uncatchable. Having disappeared without trace from his first Olympic games, in Athens, he relished the nearly unbroken string of victories that followed with infectious zeal. Criticized for his nonchalant chest-thumping in 2008, his unflappable charm exposed the thin-skinned jealousy of many US athletes for what it really was – anxiety. In an era that saw one icon after another – and not just track athletes but cyclists and baseball players – succumbing to doping scandals, Bolt’s unblemished record assumed a significance it might otherwise have lacked. Breaking records is one thing, but legitimate world-beating form, and an unimpeachable reputation for eight years at the top level of a global sport, especially while so many others are failing to pass muster, is something far more important.
By any reasonable measure, Jamaica’s sprinters have always outperformed the Americans that compete against them so fiercely. (For one thing, the US population is roughly 100 times larger than Jamaica’s.) But, like their great rivals, several top Jamaican speedsters have also lost their reputations in the wake of doping bans. Two earlier Jamaican-born sprint gold medalists (Ben Johnson and Linford Christie) also suffered precipitous falls from grace after testing positive for banned substances. Within this context, Bolt’s medals shine even more brightly.
Andre de Grasse, the young Canadian (of West Indian parentage) who chased Bolt down in the 200m final has all the hallmarks of an heir apparent. He is cheeky, determined, and prodigiously talented. He is also short, slender and inexperienced. Watching him inch up on the aging superstar it was not hard to recall the time when Bolt himself was an outlier. He showed promise, certainly, but he was considered much too tall and his body rocked too much when he ran. Then his coach taught him how to hold his upper body steady, and the height became an advantage. (Bolt typically finishes a 100m sprint in three to four fewer steps than his rivals.) Like all great athletes he transformed his sport and revealed new possibilities. Ultimately his achievement will not be measured in medals or times, prodigious though they were, but by his colossal presence on a global stage as a symbol of uncompromising excellence for eight unsurpassable years.
