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Simply put, Usain Bolt is the best sprinter of all time. With 13 individual gold medals – seven at World Championships and six Olympic golds – this is the stuff of legends.
Add five individual world records – four of them set in major finals – and Bolt’s claim to a rare level of greatness is undeniable.
FASTEST FIVE
His compatriot Asafa Powell broke the 10 seconds barrier on 97 occasions. Bolt comes next with 49 sub-10 seconds.
As you might have guessed, the tall man from Trelawny in Jamaica is supreme at the sharp end of the list.
He has 12 runs under 9.80 seconds, three of the fastest five and the two fastest of all, his world record of 9.58 seconds at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, Germany, and his Olympic record 9.63 seconds from the 2012 final in London, UK.
He shares the third fastest time – 9.69 seconds – a world record when he won the 2008 Beijing Olympics, with Tyson Gay and Yohan Blake. The average of Bolt’s 10 fastest 100m races is 9.73 seconds. Only Gay, Blake, Powell and Bolt himself have ever gone quicker than that.
YOUR BENCHMARK
Although only two of his individual world records have come in the 200m event, he is far better in it than anyone else. He has broken the 20 seconds barrier 34 times, 10 clear of Namibia’s Frankie Fredericks and 11 ahead of the American pair of supermen Michael Johnson and Wallace Spearmon, who have 23 each.
If you grew up with the 1968 world record of 19.83 seconds by Tommie Smith as your benchmark, Bolt’s numbers will blow you away. He has run under 19.80 seconds 21 times, with 14 of those under 19.70 seconds. Nine of the 16 clockings under 19.60 seconds and four of the seven under 19.50 seconds were run by Bolt.
As if that weren’t enough, he is the only athlete to have broken the 20 seconds mark while still a junior athlete. He did it twice. The first one is the world junior record of 19.93 in 2004.
FAST WHEN IT COUNTS
It’s an understatement to say Bolt is good in big meets. From 2008 onwards, he has produced his best times of each season in major finals. Most of us remember his world records in Beijing, China, in 2008 and in Berlin, Germany, the following year, but he never stopped speeding.
Days after his shocking false start in the 100m at the 2011 World Championships, he stormed home in the 200m in 19.40 seconds, then the fourth fastest of all time.
At the London Olympics, he pulled out his best runs of 2012 with the second fastest 100m of all time – 9.63 seconds – and a clocking of 19.32 seconds in the 200m despite an aching back.
His times have been more modest since. Still, at the 2013 and 2015 World Championships and the 2016 Olympics in Brazil, his winning times have been his best efforts in all those seasons.
Which is Bolt’s better event?
Bolt has only two world records in the 200m compared with three in the 100m. His best times in each event are both brilliant – 9.58 seconds for the 100m and 19.19 seconds in the 200m event.
You can count his 100m losses on one had with a finger to spare. Powell, Gay, Blake and Justin Gatlin are the elite group of athletes to have beaten him in the 100m, and none of them has done it twice. For the 200m, his loss to Blake at the 2012 National Senior Championships is the only blemish on his competitive record since 2008.
Best of all time
It’s hard to compare athletics from different eras. The great Americans Jesse Owens and Bob Hayes raced at a time when professional careers in athletics weren’t common and so very few American men did more than one Olympics.
There is, nevertheless, a point of comparison which separates Bolt from the illustrious trio of Owens, Hayes and Carl Lewis. The prolific Jamaican won both his 2008 Olympic 100m and 200m gold medals in world record times. No other male sprinter has ever done that, but that shouldn’t be a surprise. After all, there has never been a sprinter quite like Bolt. – worldathletics.com
. This is an excerpt from Usain Bolt: Legend
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