Being the best comes at a cost hard to fathom. It cost him blood, sweat and agony to be where he is today. The 2005 Helsinki World Championships saw him finishing an injury-ridden 26.27 seconds in the 200m final.
He hadn’t yet completed a full athletic season to allow him to take on the best yet. His new training regimen, though, made sure there were enough reserves of skill and resolve to recover from this aberration. A car accident derailed his comeback plans further. He marked his return to the 200m fold emphatically, beating Justin Gatlin’s meet record in Ostrava, Czech Republic. He was doing just enough to keep a novelist interested.
Bolt claimed his first major world medal two months later at the IAAF World Athletics Final in Stuttgart, Germany. And the medal frenzy continued with wins at the senior Championships and regional Championships. Along the way, he was always pining to run 100m but Glen Mills figured it could compromise on his middle distance running abilities.
Mills then challenged Bolt to break the national 200m record and promised him permission to race for the title of the fastest man on earth – the 100m – if he did so. After hurtling to a national record-breaking 19.75s, breaking a 36-year-old record in the process, all he asked Mills was, “When is my 100m debut?”
In a way, running the 200m and 400m formats over the years greatly influenced Bolt in his 100m successes. Be it his world-record breaking runs of 9.58s at the 2009 World Championships or the 19.19s 200m run again at the same Berlin Championships, his experience with the longer distances have helped him develop into a complete sprinter.
400m runs greatly boost an athlete’s stamina and body balance at the turns. The turns hold great importance in the athletic world as they sometimes prove to be the difference between a medal-winning run and a world record run. The stamina and turn-handling abilities helped Bolt outrun any competition in 200m whatsoever.
The 200m runs, in turn, helped him greatly improve his stride frequency. This allowed him to keep knocking those hundredths of a second off his 100m timings and script flabbergasting sprints over the years, the most notable being the “double triple” he scripted at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2012 London Olympics, consisting of gold medals in the 100m, 200m and the 4x100m categories.
All his achievements apart, his perch at the apogee of the sprinting world has been frantically discussed and speculated. Be it the high percentage of fast-twitch muscle that he possesses or the maddeningly low subcutaneous fat stores his body wields, everything about him is widely discussed and dissected. His West African origin is a possible theory frequently put forth to explain his insane running abilities.
While the fast-twitch muscle gives an initial burst at the start, the subcutaneous fat levels ensure both muscle-movement efficiency and increased aerodynamic profiles. The high centre of gravity allows him that much more leverage to establish that characteristic lead over his rivals as can be seen every now and then.
Nevertheless, any genetic advantages he may have had have been put to the maximum use . His truancies of early years have given way to a personality driven to be bloody fast, to be the be-all and end-all of his sport. Off the field too, he has the world eating out of his hands with an infectious charm endearing young and old alike.
The fact that he still remains an untainted athlete pacifies an audience that feels wronged by drug-powered athletes practising their trade. Bolt has himself time and again maintained that he is absolutely clean. He has reiterated his larger aim of protecting the integrity of sport and to infuse some credibility to the fold.
Watching him transform into this mean world-beating machine has been sheer joy for people even remotely interested in sport.
Just like power, with great success too comes humongous responsibility. As the shepherd of one of the greatest sprinting careers to have ever been made on planet Earth, Bolt could single-handedly hold the key to restoring fractured souls and disillusioned minds.
As the author marks his own 21st birthday today, he also believes that Bolt, at the 2016 Rio De Janeiro Games, could present one of the most enthralling prospects of an under 9.5 seconds 100m run ever; an event, if it becomes a reality, that would rank alongside the greatest inventions or discoveries ever made since civilization took its first baby steps.