Cool Runnings

And then he did what he always does, run fast, his body unfurling into gazelle like steps that sailed him past the competition. He won too, like he always does, his 9th Olympic medal in his 9th Olympic final in his third consecutive Games. Beijing, London, Rio – Bolt had stamped his marker from the eastern corner of the world to the west. Literally and figuratively, his dominance could not be more complete. In Bolt’s typically unflustered style the assessment was simple – “there you go, I am the greatest.” Really, who can argue with that? Bolt’s medal numbers may lack well behind that of the phenomenal American Michael Phelps but on a whole his feats are astounding. Consider this; Bolt has spent a sum total of 325 seconds running at the Olympic tracks (finals and qualifiers included). That is a little under five and a half minutes and translates to one gold medal every 36 seconds. Like the old school Western gunslinger, Bolt’s magic is about years of preparation and seconds of madness. But quantifying the magic of Usain Bolt in just numbers would be a disservice to a man who has transcended the barriers of sport to have established himself as a cultural and lifestyle icon. With Bolt the brilliance is not just in his alien talent or his outstanding numbers, it is also in his character. It is not about the fact that he wins, it is in how he does it that makes him such an icon. Years from now people will perhaps talk not just of Pele or Muhammad Ali but also of this 6 foot 5-inch Jamaican giant who ate chicken nuggets, ran Olympic finals with his shoe laces undone and also danced a mean samba. We are lucky to live in an era of phenomenal talents in sport. In football we have Lionel Messi, in cricket we had Sachin Tendulkar, in tennis Roger Federer – each man pushing the boundaries of their chosen sport beyond anything seen before. But with Bolt it is different. Because running is purer, more elemental. It is less a sport than it is an impulse honed by man since the dawn of civilization. Think of it this way, no human being in recorded history has mastered said impulse better than the Jamaican. So every time Bolt creates a new record, he does not just push the boundary of sport, he pushes the boundary of possibility for mankind. Not without reason does his Twitter profile say “anything is possible I don’t think limits.” Unfortunately, that’s not always true and in Rio, Bolt has demonstrated the first signs of age. “My legs just gave up,” he said after his 200m win in a time of 19.78 seconds. It was a far cry from his London effort of 19.32 and his Beijing effort of 19.3. His world record of 19.19 was a distant memory. At 29, time is catching up with even this most ubiquitous talent. For athletics Bolt came at a time when the sport was reeling from drugs controversies that defined its most famous champions. In that vein he has managed to salvage the sport, a clean champion in the midst of a murky world of performance enhancing supplements. Of the 30 best 100m times ever recorded, 21 are by athletes who have tested positive for drugs. The other 9 are all by Usain Bolt. In many ways Bolt is a freak, an outlier, a gift from the Gods of athletics at a time that they needed it most. Hopefully his will be the legacy that rescues a discipline. In the end, Bolt is about all of this and more. Watching Bolt run is like food for the soul – an expression of pure talent, preparation and unshakeable confidence that makes you literally want to get up and embrace the person next to you because you have together experienced something so special and unique. Bolt doesn’t so much win, he demolishes opponents but does it all with the casual insouciance of the cheeky next door neighbor. In Rio he pulled playground pranks on an ESPN reporter, hours before his final race; in London he calmed down a nervous volunteer minutes before his 100m final; and in Beijing, well everyone knows what happened in Beijing. In this age of hyperbole, Bolt is unique because in the same frame he comes across as both the guy who you can go have a drink with at the local pub who by the way also happens to be the greatest athlete of all time. In 2008 in Bejing, a young Bolt emerged as a phenomenon, in 2012 in London that young man became a legend, and in Rio on the early hours of this Saturday morning he took his place among the immortals.