BOLT OVERCOMES SORE LEGS TO CLAIM ANOTHER CROWN

The sign of a true champion is not how he performs when he is in the best of health and form but how he responds to competition when he or she is not at the peak of their powers.

In the finals of the men’s 100 metres at the 14th IAAF in Moscow, on a rainy night on August 11, 2013, Usain Bolt, his legs sore and lined up against a solid field including three other Jamaican teammates, knew that this one was not going to be easy.

When he blew up in Beijing in 2008, Bolt won the 100m by the widest margin ever in a major championship finals.  He won that race in a world record 9.69 seconds beating his chest as he began celebrating his victory from 20 metres out. Trinidad’s Richard Thompson, the silver medalist was two-tenths of a second behind. In Berlin a year later, the gap between Bolt 9.58s and Tyson Gay 9.71, was 0.13 seconds, closer than the field was in Beijing but still a city block away. In London it was Bolt 9.63, Blake 9.75, the gap 0.12. The field has been getting closer.

Bolt had come in silently targeting the world record he set four years prior but after cruising through the first round, Bolt seemed on track to accomplish yet another remarkable campaign. However, after his semi-finals when he sleepwalked 9.92s easing by and staring down with mock disdain at American challenger Mike Rodgers, Bolt seemed unhappy. “My legs were sore after the semi-finals, I don’t know why, but the world record wasn’t on so I came out just to win,” he later told the BBC.

Meanwhile, Justin Gatlin, the biggest threat to Bolt, was looking confident in the lane next to the world record holder. Gatlin had beaten Bolt for the first time in June and felt like he knew how to get the better of him again. What he didn’t realize is that Bolt is no ordinary man. When he beat Bolt, the Jamaican champion, was coming off injury and was not even close to being near his best. He found out the hard way.

When the gun sounded, Gatlin flew out like a rocket but was only slightly ahead at the half-way mark. He could feel it. He was half-way to accomplishing his goal of defeating the big man who in the last five years has never been defeated in the final of a major championships except for when he false started in Daegu two years ago. All he had to do was hold on for about four more seconds. “Then I saw these long legs coming up on my right side,” Gatlin said afterwards. “He’s great. He’s just great.”

Bolt had stormed through to win in 9.77 seconds, a time that was once the world record held by Asafa Powell more than four years before. It wasn’t Bolt’s usual magical time – the margin down to 0.08 seconds – but it was good enough to seal the victory; good enough to further cement the legend that is Usain Bolt. It was a performance and time that demonstrated clearly that Bolt knows how to win even when the ‘big engine’ is not firing on all cylinders.

PS:

Spare a thought for Nesta Carter, who won his first global outdoor individual medal, a bronze,– and for Kemar Bailey-Cole (the next coming of Bolt) and Nickel Ashmeande, the latter who were making their global debuts and set personal bests – 9.93 and 9.90 respectively en-route to the finals.

It was the first time any country had fielded four runners in a world championship 100-metre final. Jamaica did it without Yohan Blake, Michael Frater or Asafa Powell, who were not in Moscow and demonstrated the incredible depth of this small nation that is clearly the sprint factory of the world.