media_artricles :: 2015

Big man for the big occasion

Never doubt the heart of a champion.

For that's what yesterday's triumph by Usain Bolt in the men's 100-metre final at the World Athletics Championships in Beijing was all about.

Heart, guts, character. Characterise it however you will, but putting aside his indifferent form all season to overcome the challenge of Justin Gatlin when it really mattered underscored just how absolutely phenomenal this 29-year-old Jamaican really is.

Forget about all the “Good versus Evil” tra-la-la being bandied about ahead of the meet's signature event, suggesting that the defending champion—who has never failed a drug test—had to defeat Gatlin (twice suspended for samples returning positive) for the sake of the image of the sport, which has taken a battering over the past three weeks since “The Times” of London and German broadcaster ARD alleged that the governing body, the IAAF, had deliberately ignored hundreds of suspect test results over an 11-year-period at Olympics and World Championships.

This was simply a race in which Gatlin, the 2004 Olympic champion, was in the best form of his life, having clocked the season's fastest times on the way to a 28-race unbeaten streak. In stark contrast, Bolt has been a mere shadow of his usual dominating self, struggling with a hip injury and only once—at the anniversary event in London when he crossed the line first in 9.87 seconds in the final last month—producing anything resembling peak performance.

Everything pointed to victory for the 33-year-old American, even moreso after the semi-finals at the “Bird's Nest” Stadium in the Chinese capital where Bolt had arrived as a global superstar at the 2008 Summer Olympics in winning gold in the 100 and 200 metres before being a part of the successful Jamaican sprint relay team, all three titles coming in world record time.

Gatlin looked completely at ease in cruising to victory in his semi-final in 9.77 seconds. Bolt also won his semi, but started poorly, stumbled for a few strides and eventually crossed the line in 9.96, the same time given to second-placed finisher Andre de Grasse of Canada.

Come the big occasion 90 minutes later though and it was the big man from the country parish of Trelawny who was up to the challenge, overcoming another indifferent start to surge through the field, just getting ahead of Gatlin, for whom the moment of decision proved too much as he noticeably tightened up over the final strides sensing the presence of the barrelling Bolt who claimed his ninth World Championship gold medal by one-hundredth of a second in crossing the line in 9.79.

This wasn't about timing but about winning, although it's interesting to note that when Jamaican-born Canadian Ben Johnson produced the same time in the final of the event at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, it was considered then to be absolutely astonishing, shattering his own world record. Of course, it was just a matter of 24 hours later for the biggest drug scandal, up to that time, to explode when Johnson was announced as testing positive for the banned steroid stanozolol and was stripped of the title, the gold being awarded instead to Carl Lewis.For many in the sport, especially at the official level, Bolt's enduring class has avoided the distinctly uncomfortable situation of a man twice found guilty of cheating—although Gatlin continues to plead his innocence—standing at the top of the podium to receive the gold medal in the athletic event that generates the greatest interest, attention and reaction across the sporting world.

None of those sub-plots, however intriguing, can diminish what the affable, smiling superstar of the track has achieved. Just as in the lead-in to the London 2012 Olympics, when it was felt that he would struggle against fellow-Jamaican Yohan Blake, the man who beat him at the National Championships a month earlier, Bolt has silenced the doubters in delivering when it really mattered.

Nothing lasts forever, and the time will come, somewhere down the road, when that extra surge of energy at the big moment will be missing. As much as he is so successful and extremely comfortable in the global spotlight, the easygoing living legend has long been suggesting that he wants to bow out before that moment of obvious vulnerability arrives.

He says that Rio 2016 will be his last Olympics.

Those games, the first to be held in South America, will conclude on August 21, the day Bolt turns 30. There's a lot that can happen, one way or the other, in the little less than 12 months leading up to those Games.

But especially after yesterday, no-one will dare rule out an unprecedented hat-trick of Olympic sprint double titles for the man whose championship character has withstood the fires of another scorching examination.

Top