Usain Bolt added a new dimension Sunday night to the prerace ritual that has made him as much of a crowd pleaser as a world beater.
Bolt struck his trademark lightning-bolt pose, to be sure, when the public-address announcer introduced him before the 100-meter final at the World Track & Field Championships.
Just before getting into the blocks, Bolt made a hand gesture that mimed the whoosh and movement of a supersonic aircraft taking off.
And then he took his sport on a warp-speed ride into a new dimension, redefining the standards of the most basic human athletic pursuit, running as fast as one can over a measured distance.
Over the last nine decades, no one had broken the 100-meter world record by a larger margin than the 22-year-old Jamaican did with his time of 9.58 seconds at the 1936 Olympic Stadium.
On a warm night with a 2-m.p.h. tail wind, Bolt sheared .11 seconds from the record of 9.69 he set in winning the 2008 Olympic gold medal.
“He has taken not just this sport but sport in general to a new place,” said Ato Boldon, the four-time Olympic sprint medalist and NBC commentator.
“We have to rethink everything we know about human performance. I used to talk about times in the area of 9-low as some kind of unicorn-like fantasy, but he has made fantasy into reality.”
This was Bob Beamon breaking the long jump world record by more than 2 feet at the 1968 Olympics, Wilt Chamberlain scoring 100 points in a game, Michael Phelps winning his 8th gold medal, all feats that seemed implausible before they occurred.
As many expected, Bolt turned his much-hyped duel with Tyson Gay of the United States into a battle between one man and history, even though reigning world champion Gay ran an exceptional race to finish second in 9.71. That is the third-fastest time in history, beaten only by Bolt’s two world records.
Former world record-holder Asafa Powell of Jamaica was third in 9.84.
“I never thought that I would see this even if I lived to be 100,” said Mel Rosen, 81, the 1992 U.S. Olympic men’s coach.
“We have always thought if you were going to be a great sprinter, to get even better you had to have an incredible stride length or turnover. Bolt is the first to have both.”
At 6 feet 5 inches, Bolt is unusually tall for a sprinter, but he has managed to uncoil that body from the blocks more efficiently than anyone ever imagined possible for a runner of his height.
Having overcome that apparent disadvantage, Bolt then has the advantage of needing two or three fewer strides to cover the 100 meters than a runner like Gay, who is 5-11. They aren’t loping strides, because the speed at which Bolt’s feet get on and off the ground, or turnover, is very quick, reminiscent of the styles of Olympic track legends Jesse Owens (5-10) and Michael Johnson (6-0).
Bolt edged into the lead Sunday after 30 meters, but Gay stayed on his heels for the next 50 before the Jamaican calmly put clear daylight between him and his U.S. pursuer.
“This was the first time he was challenged, and it was like he was saying, ‘You can do whatever you want behind me, but I’m not changing anything and at the end of it I will still be the greatest ever,'” Boldon said.
Unlike the Beijing Olympics, where Bolt cost himself a faster time by playing to the crowd with an open-armed gesture in the final 20 meters, he ran hard through the finish here. He exulted with a chest slap only after seeing the world-record time, which brought a $100,000 bonus, on a track-level display board.
“I am really happy Usain Bolt broke the record,” Gay said. “I know that may sound strange, but I knew it was humanly possible for someone to run that fast. I’m just sorry it wasn’t me.”
Gay, bothered by a groin injury, may not run the 200 meters, in which he beat Bolt for the world title two years ago.
The 200 was Bolt’s race until 2008. He had run just a single 100 in competition before then, and this was his first at a world meet.
In just two seasons, Bolt has transformed not only the chronological parameters of the sprints — he also set a world record in winning the Olympic 200 — but the mental approach to getting ready for the gun.
“It is amazing how relaxed he is,” Rosen said.
His favored prerace meal is chicken nuggets. He fuels his psyche in the final minutes before a race not with the outbursts of feigned fury common among sprinters but a lighthearted manner seemingly more befitting of a three-legged race at the company picnic.
“Maybe we had it all wrong, being all serious and smacking ourselves in the chest before a race,” Boldon said. “We always said a relaxed sprinter is a fast sprinter, and now we have the most relaxed sprinter of all time who is also the fastest sprinter of all time.”
As he waited for the start of the final, delayed seven minutes by the end of a previous event, Bolt sat on the blocks and exchanged handshakes with Gay in the adjoining lane. Then he exchanged fist bumps with Powell.
Finally, as Gay paced behind his lane like a caged lion, Bolt kept hamming it up, covering and uncovering his mouth with his hands, holding up one finger, doing the lightning bolt, then the whoosh.
“I train all year so I know what is necessary when I get in the blocks,” Bolt said. “I can have all the fun I want before the race. But when the starter says, ‘On your mark,’ I just refocus.”
Bolt talked earlier this year of wanting to be a legend in the sport. Sunday, he said that time was yet to come.
“It’s getting there,” Bolt said. “I don’t think in two years you can do it. I have to keep at it year after year, and it is going to be hard.”
Not the way he makes it look.
———-
phersh@tribune.com
More inside
U.S. Olympic Committee to delay launch of Olympic TV. PAGE 21
