Edward Ovadia
Email: edwardovadia [at] gmail.com
Usain Bolt is the greatest sprinter we have ever seen. Let me just put that out there, although I'm sure most people won't need much convincing. He has just demolished a 100m field of incredible quality, and made a new world record of 9.69 look easy. At 21, there really seems to be no limit to what he can do.
Interestingly he trailed the first 30m to Richard Thompson. But his strength was just too much. He accelerated away between 40 and 60 metres, and seemed to cruise to the end five metres ahead of everyone else, loving every millisecond of it.
But someone has to tell Bolt to run through the line, and to finish his race. Looks great to be toying with the field, but there are years to celebrate. For all of us who want to see you at your best, just delay the celebrations by a few seconds, please!
Running through the line, with a dip on the line, it looks like he would have run 9.65. Had he run that time, it would have put him almost 0.1 seconds ahead of the next fastest person in history.
And this was with a wind of 0 m/s. Imagine closer to 2.0 m/s, with Bolt running all the way through the line. Could we see 9.5 soon? Only recently we were celebrating Powell running 9.77 consistently. That now seems pedestrian.
The strangest thing with Bolt is that it seems he doesn't even have time to get into his stride in the 100m. With such long legs, it's almost as if he need more distance to fully stretch out. Which asks the obvious question - will we see a world record in the 200m? Erasing Michael Johnson's mark - a feat previously thought to be impossible? It certainly seems possible now.
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