The fast and the effortless — Usain Bolt made winning gold medals look easy

Usain Bolt celebrates winning the Olympic gold medal in the men’s 100m final at the National Stadium in Beijing on 16 August 2008. He set a new world-record time of 9.69 seconds. (Photo: Michael Steele / Getty Images)

By Keanan Hemmonsbey

7 Jul 2024

The sprinting sensation broke new ground with his performance at the 2008 Games in Beijing.

Often in sport there are athletes whose talent outweighs their work ethic, leading fans and supporters to wonder: what if they took it seriously?

Sometimes these athletes are dedicated and talented enough to make it to the highest peaks of their sport, but there’s an inkling that they could achieve even greater heights if they put in more effort.

Among them are Australian tennis player Nick Kyrgios and Belgium’s retired football star Eden Hazard. Both have had incredible careers, but many believe they could have achieved more if not for their cavalier attitudes.

Jamaican athletics icon Usain Bolt falls into the same category with regard to his initial attitude to training, but conversely, his dominance was unlike anything the sport of sprinting had seen.

“I wouldn’t say it was a regret because everything happens for a reason… but I wish I got serious earlier,” Bolt said in an interview before the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

“Because when I was a junior, if I really took track and field serious, I probably could have won like four Olympics.

“I mean, if I started early because I was really talented. But I was kind of lazy, didn’t want to train as much,” he admitted. “So, for me, I would tell my younger self, listen, get serious sooner, and you could do like ridiculous numbers.”

Bolt has eight Olympic medals, all gold. Of all track athletes to have competed at the Olympic Games since 1896, only American Carl Lewis and Finnish distance runner Paavo Nurmi have more golds – nine each.

Bolt did retire from sprinting in 2017 with nine Olympic gold medals, but the 4x100m gold he won at the Beijing Games in 2008 was stripped from Jamaica the same year he retired after his teammate, Nesta Carter, received a sanction for doping.

At the next two Olympic Games – in London in 2012 and Rio de Janeiro in 2016 – Bolt claimed the 100m and 200m gold medals, becoming the first person in history to claim the sprint double on three occasions, to go with his 4x100m golds.

Taste of the Games

Despite his easy-going attitude towards training in his younger days, Bolt was a junior world champion in the 200m.

In early 2004, as an 18-year-old, he became the first junior sprinter to run the 200m in under 20 seconds.

He was hampered by a leg injury for the rest of that year, but was still quick enough to secure a spot on the Jamaican Olympic team in Athens in 2004. He was eliminated in the first round after running 21.05 seconds.

In the following years, despite hesitation from his coach because of his slow starts and looking at his opponents while running, Bolt focused on the 100m, running his first professional race in 2007.

With half his training dedicated to the shorter distance, Bolt discovered a new focus on his discipline.

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Less than a year later, he ran 9.76 seconds – just above the world record held by his countryman, Asafa Powell.

By the end of March 2008, in only his fifth senior professional 100m race, Bolt sped down a wet track at the Icahn Stadium in New York in 9.72 seconds and the world record was his.

Struggling to start, slowing down before the finish line and looking at opponents, he had nevertheless shot like a lightning bolt out of nowhere to become the favourite for Olympic gold in the 100m a few months later in Beijing.

Despite his rapid rise to success in the event, he still preferred the longer sprint. “I always say the 200m is my favourite race. That’s not going to change,” he said after breaking the 100m record for the first time.

Beijing golds

At the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, Bolt’s script for success was similar in both the 100m and 200m. He jogged through the three rounds of qualifiers, including the semifinals. He registered an incredible 9.85 seconds and 20.09 seconds in the 100m and 200m semis, respectively.

He still had bad habits – jittery starts, slowing down towards the end and looking at athletes in other lanes – but that didn’t stop him from being the fastest.

In the 100m final, Bolt left nothing in the tank for the first 60m for the first time at those Olympics, but his start was among the slowest, and Richard Thompson and Darvis Patton on either side got the better first 10m start.

Bolt, however, turned on the afterburners and left everyone in his dust with 20m to go.

This time, instead of looking at where his opponents might be, he raised his arms either side of his body and beat his chest as he crossed the finish line in a new world record time of 9.69 seconds.

Four days later, at the same National Stadium, Bolt broke Michael Johnson’s 12-year-old record of 19.32 seconds in the 200m as well.

This time, the 1.95m-tall athlete used every centimetre of his height and every watt of power to break the record in 19.30 seconds as he ran through the finishing line and ducked at the end.

Bolt obliterated the field, with second-placed Shawn Crawford finishing more than half a second slower in 19.96 seconds.

Two events, two gold medals, two world records. Bolt’s recipe for success despite his running flaws?

“I stopped worrying about the start. The end is what’s important,” he said.

After only taking up the 100m event a year before, Bolt had quickly become elevated to one of the greatest sprinters the world has seen.

More records

The next year, Bolt broke his own 100m and 200m world records at the World Championships in Berlin, in 9.58 seconds and 19.19 seconds, respectively. Both records still stand.

He attributed his success to getting better at starting fast.

Bolt reached a new level of dominance when he improved his weakness.

Hard work may win when talent doesn’t work hard, but the world’s best sprinter proved that there’s no beating talent that works hard too. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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