"I felt deadly, I wanted to kill people with my season" - When Usain Bolt recalled everything coming together for iconic 2008 run

Usain Bolt once claimed that he felt a special kind of energy during the 2008 season. The eight-time Olympic champion would go on to break both the 100m and the 200m world records at the Beijing Olympics.

Bolt's rise to prominence started at the 2002 World Junior Championships when he became the youngest gold medalist in the 200m. The Jamaican sprinter would, however, endure a tough time at the start of his professional career, with injuries ending his 2004 Athens Olympics campaign.

However, Bolt felt a special energy before the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Recalling his mindset at the time, he wrote in his memoir Faster Than Lightning: My Autobiography:

"Every now and then an athlete can sense something special might happen. It’s not a feeling of destiny, or a sense of inevitability, more an idea that all the hard work is paying off. In 2008, everything came together, I felt deadly. I wanted to kill people with my season."

Bolt even revealed that he was willingly doing everything the coach told him after being lenient in previous seasons.

"I did all the weights Coach asked me to do, I did all the back exercises on the schedule. Hell, I even went to the gym when I was told. My focus was Beijing and nothing was going to get in my way," Usain Bolt added.

The 2008 season eventually proved Bolt's one of the best. In his fourth race of the season, at the New York Grand Prix, he broke the 100m world record for the first time in 9.72s. He lowered the record to 9.69s at the 2008 Olympic Games, winning the race in his iconic chest-thumping style.

---

Usain Bolt believes he could have run faster than 9.58s

Usain Bolt during the Soccer Aid For Unicef 2022 Training Session - Source: Getty

Following the 2008 Olympic finals, Bolt ran the current world record time of 9.58s at the 2009 World Championships. It has been over 15 years since Bolt ran that time, and despite the advancement in spikes, no one has been able to close to the time, with Fred Kerley and Trayvon Bromell, 9.76s, being the fastest in the last decade.

However, Bolt believes he could have run even faster than his 9.58s if he hadn't been injured in the 2011 season.

“If I hadn’t got injured in the season, I would have broken the record again,” Usain Bolt said on The Fix podcast. “That year, I was floating. I was running very well and the coach was excited. It was the first time I heard him say we were going to race and break the world record.”

The Jamaican competed sparsely in the 2010 and 2011 seasons and didn't get any 100m medals at the World Championships. He bounced back the following year at the London Olympics, running 9.63s for the win. Bolt won his third straight Olympic title in 9.81s at the 2016 Rio Games.