LIGHTNING struck three times, and though he was upstaged on the night by Wayde van Niekirk's dismantling of the 17-year-old 400m world record, Usain Bolt's third successive Olympic 100m title further cements his niche on the highest step in the pantheon of sprinting.
First man to win three titles at the distance, the Jamaican is pursuing a third Olympic treble in Rio. If he should succeed in winning the 200m, which starts today and can help his country to victory in the 4x100m relay, he will bring his total of Olympic golds to nine. That would equal the record for athletics, held jointly by US sprinter Carl Lewis and Paavo Nurmi, the Finnish endurance legend of the 1920s.
Lewis was voted the male athlete of the 20th century. He won the short sprint twice and set a world best of 9.86 which he never improved on, and despite Lewis's four successive long jump titles, Bolt has eclipsed him. He also has 11 World titles, three more than Lewis.
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To put Bolt's 100m career in perspective, consider this: a total of 13 men have run faster than Lewis, whose most iconic performance was the four golds he won in the 1984 Los Angeles Games (100, 200, relay and long jump). These 13 sprinters have recorded 9.85 or better on 103 occasions. Just five men account for 95 of these, and Bolt has posted 31 of them. His compatriot, and predecessor as world record-holder, Asafa Powell, has 26; Justin Gatlin, runner-up in Rio, 17; Tyson Gay 12, and Yohan Blake nine.
Bolt is the only one of them without a doping conviction.
Maurice Green, the Sydney 2000 Olympic champion, styled himself the GOAT "Greatest of all time". He had this tattooed on his right biceps, but having run sub 9.86 just four times, he too has been utterly eclipsed by Bolt.
Donovan Bailey clocked 9.85 just once – the world record with which he won Olympic gold in Atlanta. Lewis, as we said, never ran that fast, and the best time by Allan Wells, Scotland's 1980 Olympic champion, was 10.11 which remains the Scottish record. Linford Christie ran his fastest time, 9.87, to win World Championship gold in Stuttgart, but subsequently was also discredited for doping.
It was with some satisfaction that I watched Bolt cut down Gatlin who had been a metre clear at half distance, just as he was in London 2012. The American, who won the title in 2004, has twice failed anti-doping protocols, and his presence in Sunday's final provoked a loud chorus of booing. He was the first doping convicted athlete to return and win an Olympic sprint medal. Now he has done so again.
I believe he should not be competing. At 34 he is the oldest Olympic 100m medallist a performance which provides further endorsement of Norwegian research which has demonstrated that even after prolonged time off illegal performance-enhancing steroids, animals retain the capacity to out-perform those which have not been exposed to steroids. Gatlin was the world's fastest at 100m in both of the last two years - oldest man ever to top the rankings. Why the anti-doping movement does not investigate the scientific evidence and ban all cheats for life is beyond me.
After a barely adequate start (0.155sec reaction time, and second slowest) left him last after 20 metres, Bolt cut lose and was easing down in the last few strides after he had caught Gatlin.
Though three of the fastest men ever were in the race, it was perhaps not a classic Olympic 100m final. London 2012 saw a record seven of the eight finalists dip under 10 seconds, and that was former world record-holder Powell who would surely have done so but for picking up a groin injury. Two of the field in Rio failed to better 10.00.
Gatlin lined up as fastest in the field this year at 9.80, but finished in 9.89 - Bolt can get inside his head at will.
Can Bolt end his Olympic career with another record? When he set the current world 200m best of 19.19 in the 2009 World Championships, he did so into a headwind of - 0.3 metres per second. The legal limit for a record is +2mps. With a wind of 2mps behind him his world best equates to sub-19.
A breakdown of his 200m world best showed he covered the first 100m in 9.92 - Carl Lewis ran no faster in his two Olympic 100m victories. This means Bolt's final 100m was 9.27sec, which tells how he has to work to get his long levers moving.
We could wait 100 years to see his like again.
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