Bolt versus The Beast – it’s the only game in town
It seems almost insulting to whittle the entire Olympics down to a single event. And a single athlete – Usain Bolt. But he is the undisputed star of Olympic sport, eclipsing the considerable and combined talents of Michael Phelps, Oscar Pistorius, and GB’s very own Steve Redgrave in his bamboozling, hellaciously brilliant, God-given talent.
How can we know that with such certainty? Well, if there is one event that will attract the biggest single audience – be it in a stadium, or on TV – it’s the men’s 100m final.
The last time Bolt ran in an Olympic 100m final he broke the world record. A year later at the World Champs in 2009 he obliterated his own record with an eye-watering, toe-blistering 9.58 seconds. It was only a few decades ago that the fastest humans in the world would struggle to break the tape in under 10 seconds.
But since Bolt starburst onto the world scene, he has been far from ascendant. For this year the man to beat is not the Bolt, but “The Beast”: Bolt’s training partner, Yohan Blake. He was given his chimerical non de guerre because he runs, it is said, without fear.
The fastest man in the world this year? Yohan Blake, 100m in 9.75 seconds.
The last man to beat Bolt in the 100m? Yohan Blake. One of only three to have ever accomplished this.*
The last man to beat Bolt in his favoured discipline – the distance that he was supposedly unbeatable in – the 200m? Yohan Blake.
The man who stole Bolt’s 100m world title at the World Athletics Champs last year in South Korea? Yohan Blake.
One reason Bolt false-started in that race, it has been mooted, is that he knew just how good Blake was because they train together, day in, day out. And what Bolt had seen had him spooked bigtime. So he tried to get out of his blocks just that fraction too early.
And it’s been suggested a minor crash in Jamaica in June may have aggravated an historic back injury that kept Bolt out of competition for much of last year.
Both the Bolt and “The Beast” made themselves scarce at Jamaica’s track and field open media day this week – presumably because it gave their other athletes a rare chance to enjoy the limelight. A limelight that is so often left in the shade when the big men are around.
But this afternoon, the friends and rivals will appear together at team Jamaica’s official track and field press launch, where they will once again – and not for the last time – command a quite gravity defying hold on Olympic attentions.
* Of the others who have ever achieved this – one is fellow Jamaican Asafa Powell, the final member of the Jamaican 100m team, a former world record holder in his own right, whose personal best is a quite terrifying 9.72 seconds.
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