Sport
Usain Bolt seeks to repeat ‘living legend’ status at London Olympics
Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt. PHOTO/File
And now, the encore.
Sprinting sensation Usain Bolt is the world record holder, the defending Olympic champion and, these days, an international man of mystery.
Beginning on Saturday, at a low-profile meet in his home country of Jamaica, the world will start finding out what Bolt has in store for the London Games. So far this year, his most notable race has been a laugh-filled photo op with Prince Harry during the British royal’s visit to Kingston in March.
Since then, the world’s fastest man has been training hard, trying to become, in his words, “a living legend,” trying to set aside worries that nagging injuries have made him something less as a competitor.
“He has set that ‘living legend’ theme as a motivational factor for him,” his coach, Glen Mills, said last week. “It’s a standard of preparation and performance that he has set. Defending the titles successfully is the main objective for him. That’s the ultimate goal.”
Unlike 2008, when Bolt headed into the Olympic year as the new man on the scene and a relatively unknown commodity, he is the man to beat this time around. But there are plenty of obstacles along the way — none more formidable than the athlete who trains alongside him, Yohan Blake.
Last year, Blake won gold at the world championships after Bolt was disqualified for a false start in the 100 meters.
Blake’s best time in the 100 is 9.82 seconds, though he also owns the world’s second-fastest time in the 200 — the 19.26 he ran last September after taking Bolt’s advice on how to maneuver through the curve.
This Olympic cycle, it’s the 22-year-old Blake who is the young newcomer, much the way Bolt was four years ago, when he was 21.
But that’s where Bolt wants the parallels to end.
“I think the tutoring just stopped,” Bolt said after watching his training partner run only seven-hundredths of a second shy of his 200-meter world record.
Four years ago, it was Bolt who tantalized with all that untapped, mysterious potential.
After posting the second-best time ever in the 100 — 9.76 seconds in early May 2008 — Bolt made it clear he would be a presence at a small meet in New York on May 31. On a cool, rain-slickened night on Randall’s Island, just moments before a Jamaican reggae concert on the infield closed out the evening, Bolt ran the 100 meters in 9.72 seconds, breaking countryman Asafa Powell’s world record and routing American Tyson Gay, the favorite coming into the meet.
“Ever since he started, I knew he had the talent to do something great,” said Powell, who watched Bolt develop on the school grounds of their island country. “But when he switched to the 100 meters, and that first race that he ran in Kingston, in ‘08, and he ran 9.76, that’s when I started to say, ‘Hey, that’s the closest anyone has run to my time for years.’ So that’s when I started to look at him different.’”
Indeed, before the record-setting race, Bolt wasn’t even sure if he would run in the 100 at the Olympics; he conceded he’d goaded Mills into allowing him to run the sprint so he could avoid the more arduous work in what many considered his better event, the 400.
Things changed that night.
By the time the Olympics were through, he was more than simply another great sprinter; he was in the mix as one of the greatest of all time.
Celebrating before he even reached the finish line, Bolt ran 9.69 in Beijing in the 100-meter final. He came back four nights later and broke Michael Johnson’s 12-year-old record by posting a 19.30 in the 200 meters. As a finale, he ran the third leg for the Jamaicans, who finished in a world-record time of 37.10 in the 400 relay.
Bolt became the first sprinter to set three world records in the same Olympics. He joined Carl Lewis, Bobby Morrow and Jesse Owens as only the fourth man to win the 100, 200 and 400-meter relay at the Olympics.
“You can’t explain the feeling you feel after the greatest Olympics ever,” Bolt said after the relay win.
He stayed in shape and returned at the 2009 world championships to improve on his records in the 100 and 200. The times, 9.58 and 19.19, still stand, and the debate — replete with analysis from track junkies, physics professors and everyone in between — has now become: What times are humanly possible? Many of the experts agree that running 100 meters in the 9.4 range and breaking 19 seconds in the 200 is within reach of the world’s fastest man.
“I don’t think it’s impossible,” Mills said. “But he would have to have the right conditions and I’m not sure if London is going to be the kind” of place where it can happen.
Mills says Bolt focuses more on winning and considers any new world record to be “icing on the cake.”
With Blake looming and the Olympics getting closer, Bolt knows that it’s no longer possible to live the life of the superstar he’s become, at least not for now.
No more deejaying parties, no more late nights at the Quad, a one-time favorite nightspot in Kingston where he perfected the Gully Creeper and nuh linga, two of the dances he did to celebrate his wins in Beijing. No more motorbiking, either, though that isn’t exactly his choice.
When Bolt went looking for a bike a few months ago, the shop owner refused to sell him one.
“I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Really? Anything happens to you and they’re going to come to me, so I’m not going to sell to you,” Bolt recounted in a recent interview with NBC.
It was another reminder that, these days, he is more than a mere celebrity in Jamaica, where track and field “is a way of life,” as Mills puts it. A national treasure is more like it. Bolt gave much of the credit for his 2008 renaissance to his willingness to act the part, to stop the partying, which he conceded could be over the top, and spend more time in the gym.
“He is quite aware of what it takes to be a champion and what is needed for him to maintain the high level of performance,” Mills said. “It’s not difficult to get him to focus on his preparation and to do the kind of training that’s required.”
Mills insists Bolt will be in peak condition when he returns for this week’s meet.
He showed no signs of injury during a relay on April 12, when he anchored his team to a victory at the University of Technology Classic in Kingston.
But as is the case with any athlete who’s on his way to becoming a legend, many myths develop. One of them was that he hurt himself during a charity soccer game earlier this year.
“Not correct,” Mills said. “Usain has not played any form of soccer this year in any charity game.”
Bolt did miss the end of the 2010 season with back trouble. He is unusually tall, 6-foot-5 – which makes his ability to burst out of the starting blocks that much more amazing, and has scoliosis, a curvature of the lower spine that has required special attention for years.
“The problem is not going to go away,” Mills said. “It’s a lifetime thing he has to deal with. He does the type of warmup, preparation, he needs to do when he runs. We stick with routines and it works well with us over the years, so we continue.”
During last year or so, there was talk that Bolt might try to add the 1,600-meter relay to his repertoire, which would give him a chance to become the first man since Lewis in 1984 to win four gold medals in athletics at the Olympics. More recently, however, that talk has died down.
So, with less than three months before the Olympics, what, exactly, should sports fans expect from the world’s fastest man? Bolt, who enjoys his role as showman as much as sprinter, isn’t trying to diminish expectations. He wants to be a living legend.
“After the London Games, people should say, ‘Wow,’” Bolt said.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.