Superb double Bolt of lightning from Usain
I was not in Beijing to see Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt hurtle down the track at the National Stadium to bag world records in both the 100 and 200 metres but my enjoyment of that Olympic spectacle was heightened by having seen Bolt in action some 10 weeks prior to his golden moments in the Chinese capital.
It seems remarkable to write it now, given the ease with which he eased up over the closing 40 metres to clock 9.69 seconds in Beijing, but at the end of May, Bolt arrived in New York at the end of May as something of an unknown quantity over 100 metres.
We had seen some appropriately brief footage of the beanpole 21-year-old clocking a 9.76 in his native Kingston at the beginning of that month but even his coach, Glen Mills, had dismissed that as an aberration. Bolt, Mills insisted, was a natural 200m runner who had dropped down from the 400m as a teenager because he was too lazy to train for the one-lap sprint.
Furthermore, at 6ft 5ins, the kid was too tall to be an effective technician over the shorter distance, his frame too cumbersome to be hauled out the starting blocks for that explosive burst necessary at the gun to be a world-class 100m runner.
Bolt was in New York to compete at the Reebok Grand Prix where he would go head to head with American number one Tyson Gay, the 2007 world champion over 100 and 200m.
Even with a homegrown star like Gay, a track meet in the United States is a hard sell for promoters and particularly when that meet takes place in the same week as a doping trial for once-renowned trainer Trevor Graham is happening in San Francisco and an appeal hearing against a drugs ban to Justin Gatlin is being played out just a few blocks across town.
Promoting a rising Jamaican star to a large population of track-mad expatriates, however, is a far more palatable proposition and so it was that the Icahn Stadium on Randall’s Island, a stretch of land in the middle of the East River that separates the Bronx, Manhattan and Queens was transformed into a little Kingston for the night of May 31.
The rain that evening was more akin to hurricane season in the Caribbean and the meet was temporarily suspended halfway through because of thunder and lightning storms, with sections of the crowd in uncovered areas required to leave the stadium and take cover under the nearby Triborough Bridge.
When they returned to their seats, however, they saw lightning strike again as Bolt turned in his historic run.
With Gay a self-confessed nervous wreck on the starting line and the majority of the 6,000-plus sell-out crowd eager to get a glimpse of the new Jamaican kid on the blocks, the atmosphere had been pretty tense and it manifested itself with a false start, automatically charged to the field.
Both Bolt and Gay confirmed their reputations as poor starters when the sprinters finally got away cleanly but once the 21-year-old moved through his drive and transition phases to run upright with a clear view of the finish line, there was no catching him.
Bolt raced into a clear lead with only Gay remotely in touch but even that did not last long as the Jamaican, backed by a screaming crowd, clocked 9.72 to lower the 9.74 world record held by his compatriot Asafa Powell.
Gay was second in a none-too-shabby 9.85, but the bewilderment etched on the American’s face as Bolt charged around the stadium in celebration underlined the emphatic nature of his defeat.
Graciously, he congratulated the much taller Bolt and slipped away, as the man who would go onto to further glory savoured his first few moments as the fastest man on earth.
Double world sprint champion Gay went back to the drawing board after that night and came out stronger than ever, reappearing at the US Olympic team trials in Eugene, Oregon, a month later, to run 9.77 in the first round of qualifying and lower Maurice Greene’s nine-year-old American record by two-hundredths of a second.
There was still more to come from Gay, who, having survived a major scare in the quarter-final round when he eased up way too much and was nearly caught on the line and eliminated, returned for the final and ran a wind-assisted 9.68, the fastest time in history under any conditions.
The Olympic 100m final was shaping up nicely now but not for Gay, who four days later crashed to the track at Hayward Field in his 200m heats, having strained a semitendinosus muscle in his leg as he left the blocks.
And once again that look of bewilderment, now mixed with pain, cast its pall over the US sprinter. It was as memorable as Bolt’s epic victory in New York.
