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The nervous boy from Trelawney
The 2002 World Junior Championships was being held in Kingston, Jamaica; a 15-year-old boy from the religious and laid-back little parish of Trelawney stood awaiting the start of his event, fidgeting nervously in front of his compatriots. As the tense kid lowered his huge frame into the starting blocks, he could feel the nerves tingling in his system and the goose bumps on the back of his hands.
He had been so nervous that evening, that he had ended up putting his shoes on the wrong feet! However, 20.61 blistering seconds and 200 m later, he stood beaming in front of his adoring countrymen, on top of the world now, the youngest world junior gold medallist ever.The whole experience led the young kid to vow that he would never let pre-race nerves affect him ever again.
That was a vow that would change athletics forever.
Although specialising in the 200 m, the six foot five inches tall young man decided to dabble in the hallmark sprint event, the 100 m, in spite of the widespread belief that his height would prevent him in getting the explosive starts so very vital to success in this shortest of distances.
In 2007, leaving such naysayers confounded (something he would make a habit of doing from hereon) he set a new world record of 9.72 seconds, in just his fifth senior run over the distance.
Think about that for a moment. A world record in just his fifth senior run. This was an utterly ridiculous dsiplay of brilliance in the highly competitive world of top-level sprinting.
Usain Bolt had announced himself on the world stage in the greatest way possible.
The birth of Brand Bolt – the Beijing Olympics and the 9.69 seconds that made history
Next year, in his first ever Olympic 100 m final, the headline event at any Olympics, Bolt did an impromptu dance when his name was announced. He was wearing golden coloured Puma spikes that had “Beijing 100m Gold” emblazoned on them, and he started miming to the cameras that he would finish first. Gone was the young kid who had been so nervous in Kingston six years ago. This was a man who clearly enjoyed what he was doing, and drew pleasure from all the attention lavished on him.
Pseudo-moralistic critics derided him for his showmanship, claiming that such arrogant and over confident displays would only lead to disaster. The critics be damned! The crowd loved it, and the watching world lapped it up.
That night in Beijing, Usain Bolt crossed the finish line of the 100 metres in a scarcely believable 9.69 seconds, thumping his chest and slowing down when he was still a good 10 odd metres from the finish. Nobody had ever seen anything like this at such a level; the fastest men on earth were reduced to mere sideshows as Bolt passed them by as if they were standing still. And nobody had ever celebrated victory quite like this at the Olympic Games.
The ‘lightning’ bolt pose, the non-stop celabratory laps and the beaming dances – this was an athlete revelling in his unmatched sporting powers, owning the track with the arrogant swagger and careless nonchalance that only a Jamaican at the height of his physical prowess could ever hope to possess. (think Vivian Richards and you’ll understand).
Arrogance had never been made to look so cool.
The 200m saw none of the outrageous chest beating of the 100 m, as Bolt, racing not his competitors – but history and time – put his head down and pushed to the last as ran his favourite distance in 19.30 seconds. That was a good two-hundredths of a second faster than the time Michael Johnson had set in the Atlanta Games in ’96 – a time that many had thought was unbeatable.
Beating the United States of America
He wasn’t done with this either as he teamed up with Nestor Carter, Michael Fraser and Asafa Powell to set a new world record of 37.10 in the 4x100 m relays. Shelly-Ann Fraser and Veronica Campbell Brown won the women’s 100m and 200m golds as Jamaica sealed their dominance, and the toppling of the United States hegemony, over the sprint events at the Olympic Games.
A year later in Berlin, in the World Championships, he did the unthinkable, running even faster as he ran the 100m in 9.58 seconds and the 200m in 19.19. Bolt, it seemed, was pushing the very limits of the human body and stretching the imagination of the human mind in a way that no one had ever dreamt possible.
In the 2012 London Games, he did the treble again, winning the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay, becoming the first athlete to win all of the most prestigious events on track at two Olympics. The man had now grown from a superstar to a sporting legend.
Brand Bolt – bigger than the Commonwealth Games
Nobody doubts that Usain Bolt is the fastest human being on the planet, but it is the effortless cool he exudes that makes him the single most marketable entity in all of athletics.
He may put in hours of hard work in the gym and on the track in training, but when he starts running with those beautifully smooth and seemingly languid strides, he makes it look like all he has to do is get out of bed, after which he can run as fast as he wants.
The fact that he does that while break dancing on the spot and fist-bumping volunteers pre-race and striking those magnificient ‘lightning bolt’ poses and break dancing some more after he (inevitably) wins the race adds to the aura of the man and helps build the perception that this is the most natural thing in the world for him.
Add to this his firm anti-doping stance, and his pristinely clean record, and it would not be wrong to say that Bolt has almost single-handedly dragged the grand old sport of sprinting from the quagmire of lacklustre action and depths of infamy that it had been plunged into in the modern era.
The Jamaican is a brand ambassador for Puma (Bolt signed on with them after the 2002 Junior Games – kudos to Puma on backing the young kid, and boy are they reaping the dividends now!), Virgin Media, Visa, Rocklive and a host of other corporate giants. Brand Bolt is the face of athletics. And when he doesn’t appear in a competition, the whole thing loses a lot of lustre and the winners never quite get the prestige and recognition they deserve – after all, if Bolt had been there, those golds of theirs would be silvers, wouldn’t it?
So why isn’t Bolt running in the Commonwealth Games that are being held right now in Glasgow? Sure he’s promised to run in the 4x100m relay, but that’s not what we are here to see are we? Why is he shying away from the 100m and 200m?
Victory at CWG – little relevance
The answer is quite simple, really. Victory at the CWG would add nothing of great value to the Brand that is Bolt; neither his finances nor his reputation will be greatly increased by victory here. Defeat however would be near catastrophic. For let’s face it, when India are in with a realistic shout of finishing in the top three at an event such as this, the competition is not really going to be of the highest calibre. (I have the greatest respect for the Indians competing and winning medals at the CWG, and this comparison is in no way intended to be demeaning, but think about it... what do we do at the Olympics?).
Fellow Jamaican Yohan Blake won’t be there either, and that weakens the potential for drama considerably. If Blake had been there, the possibility remained that Bolt would have made it. After all, athletics right now doesn't have a bigger rivalry than the Lightning Bolt vs the Beast (as the typically muscular Blake is called).
Sad as it is to hear, the truth is that while Bolt the runner would love to run at the CWG (it is pretty big in Jamaica and is one of the biggest stages for them to showcase their talents on), Bolt the Brand cannot take the risk especially as he has just recently recovered from a foot injury that kept him out of the much more lucrative Golden Spike meet in Otrava and the Diamond League meet in Paris.
While all this means that the fastest man on earth will not run in the prime events, it is still a great coup for the CWG that Bolt will run the relays, because when that event comes up, Glasgow will have the undivided attention of the world, and will be assured of a viewership that would break all records for the historic competition.
For when ‘Lightning’ Bolt runs, the world stops to watch.
