LONDON — Usain Bolt may have set world records in the 100 and 200 meters at the Beijing Olympics four years ago, but what he did Sunday night arguably was the greatest performance of his career.
Bolt broke his Olympic record for the 100 in 9.63 seconds. His 6-foot-5 frame churning down the track at a top speed of 27.3 mph, Bolt beat the second-fastest man in history (Tyson Gay), the third-fastest (Asafa Powell) and fourth-fastest (Yohan Blake), dispelling about any doubt he was back on top of his game after losses to countryman Blake in both events at the Jamaican Olympic Trials.
“It was his best performance,” said Ato Boldon, a four-time Olympic medalist from Trinidad and Tobago who does commentary for NBC. “Coming off two losses, and with that great of a field to face him, I think that took his best performance to elicit that time.”
That he did it showing no ill effects of his hamstring problem only built the excitement for Thursday’s 200-meter final, when Bolt can become the first man to sweep both sprints in consecutive Olympics. Boldon believes it will be a two-man race between Bolt and Blake.
“Because there’s nobody else, really, with the tools to do it,” Boldon said. “You have to be able to run 9.7 (for the 100), and the only two guys here that are in the 200 that have run 9.7 are those two.”
American 200 standout Wallace Spearmon still believes he has a shot.
“I beat him 10 times, he’s beaten me 11, so I’m good,” Spearmon said. “No worries.”
Also in the race for the U.S. is Maurice Mitchell, the reigning NCAA champion from Florida State who has never faced Bolt.
“I just see another guy that puts on his drawers just like we do,” Mitchell said.
It might take him longer to do it than anyone else, though. Bolt’s greatness starts with his height. In the 100-meter final, Blake was at least four inches taller than every other man in the field except American newcomer Ryan Bailey (6-foot-4), and five of the eight were shorter than 6 feet.
Conventional wisdom in track used to hold that tall men were at a disadvantage because they could not produce the rapid leg turnover shorter sprinters did, but Bolt has changed that thinking. He has a high enough turnover rate to make the most of his stride-length advantage.
“He has the longest stride of anybody he competes against,” Boldon said. “He takes the fewest steps (in the 100), 41. Blake, by comparison, took 46. Gatlin took 44. He has the highest top speed — he hit 27.3 miles per hour in the race. Once he gets to that top speed, he always decelerates less — he goes 27, 26 and holds at 26. Everybody else decelerates a lot quicker.”
Bolt also comes from a country that venerates sprinters and produces them in assembly-line fashion the way East Africa produces distance runners. The vast majority of non-U.S. athletes at the top of the sprint world in recent years have come from Caribbean nations.
Of the 25 fastest 100-meter runners in history, 13 were born in the Caribbean (seven in Jamaica) and nine were born in the U.S. The other three came from West Africa.
Perhaps Bolt could be even better than he is, incredible as that might sound.
“He’s always going to be the first to tell you that he’s not the hardest worker, but he knows when to get serious and knows when to put in the work,” said Andre Lowe, who covers track and field for Jamaica’s largest newspaper, The Gleaner.
“He kind of got a wake-up call when he lost to Yohan Blake on two occasions.” Lowe said. “But the last five or six weeks, he has battened down and has been working extremely hard … When it’s required, when it has to get done, he knows when to put in the hours.”
He also has a playfulness about him that has helped make him the sport’s greatest marketing tool. After one of his races in Beijing, a replay was showing on television screens as Bolt sat down in the interview for a news conference. After Bolt admired what he had produced on the track a few minutes earlier, a journalist asked him what he was thinking as he watched it.
Bolt replied, “That guy is fast.”
John Meyer: 303-954-1616, jmeyer@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jmeyer26
