Linford Christie, the 92’ Olympic 100m champion once aptly described Usain Bolt in an interview to an American weekly: “He’s tall and on top of all that height the speed at which he can turn his legs over is like that of a short person—a freak of athletics in the nicest sense of the word.”
Of course, an array of doctors, scientists will try to dissect him into different DNA modules; physicists will examine his stride pattern and break that up into an hundredth of a second. But nothing can take away from the fact that since the 100m began—Olympics, World Championships or otherwise—he is the one they come to watch and share Bolt’s excitement and delight to be on the track.
It’s true that most 100m races are won before the eight finalist’s line up on the track. Most of these explosive, short sprints are battles of the mind and that’s where the ‘invincibility’ factor comes in. King Carl Lewis had that for a while before Ben Johnson arrived on track. After the life ban on Ben, the only person to have any kind of aura was Justin Gatlin. And then Bolt came along, knight in shining armour, to rescue world athletics from what at that time seemed to be a never-ending downward spiral into doping failures and drug abuse. Till now, Bolt hasn’t ever tested positive for a dope test. To put it more bluntly, Bolt has never failed a dope test.
After 19 gold medals in the Olympics and World Championships, spread across the 100m, 200m and the 4X100m relays, what part of science do you attribute to the success of the ‘Greatest Athlete in the World’. Bolt is 6 feet 5 inches and any coach worth his salt would immediately remark, ‘too tall for the 100.’ And not only that, with his size 13 feet, how does he maintain the centre of gravity that a sprinter so requires in that perfectly matched stride-arm pattern? Carl Lewis and Linford Christie were 6 ft 2 in, Ben Johnson is 5 ft 9 in and Justin Gatlin is 6 ft 1 in. In comparison, Bolt is way out of his stride length. Plus, he has scoliosis, or curvature of the spine in which his one leg is half an inch shorter than the other. But an area science cannot touch is the sheer joy that Bolt feels on reaching the track. Others gaze intently into the distance, focusing their breath, calming their nerves, the Jamaican ‘hangs out on the track’ playing with the fans. And the attitude—at warm-up, while a do-or-die intensity is etched on the faces of his rivals, Bolt smiles, hangs out, even dances. By the end of the 100m race, you feel the others ran, some even ran their socks off while this man cantered to the finish line and in some ‘freakish’, ‘outrageous’ manner beat the rest of the ‘focused’ bunch. It’s probably in that moment from Beijing to Rio (Olympic Games) and from Daegu to London (World Championships) that you realise the sheer sprinting talent of the man who might have just been an opening batsman and bowler at 6 feet and 5 inches. Chris Gayle is 6’1”. Curtley Ambrose is 6’7”!
If there is a science element in Bolt’s domination in the sprint, it was well explained by his coach Greg Mills: “Bolt was running against the centre of balance and that put extra pressure on his lower back resulting in soreness and injuries. We got him running with his upper body core in line and a forward lean of around 5-10 degrees. And then we got the good body position in sprinting so that the athlete is able to maintain stride length and keep ground contact short after having achieved maximum velocity.”
Myths apart, the world’s best sprinting coaches and minds that pore hours into the making of a 'champion', always believe that the 100m winner is not the person speeding up the fastest towards the end but the one who slows down the slowest (now you wonder, why we always thought that Bolt takes it easy in the last 5-10 metres).
But just imagine if he didn’t have scoliosis, the condition that curves his spine to the right and makes his right leg half an inch shorter than his left, would he have gone faster than the 9.58 in the 100m and the 19.19 in the 200m? Something to think about as Bolt begins his campaign in the 100m at the World Championships in London.
