Bolt: I’ve seen future of sprinting
When track superstar Usain Bolt has his last hurrah in London next month his mantle could well fall on the slender shoulders of a shy 24-year-old South African. Ludicrous? Bolt would disagree, writes Oliver Brown.
It is a fraught business, anointing the face of tomorrow, but Usain Bolt has done so with his customary certainty. Having watched Wayde van Niekerk win by daylight in Ostrava this week, albeit over the eccentric distance of 300m, the Jamaican avowed: “He listens and he wants to be good. If he continues like this, he’ll take over track and field.”
A bold call, designed to assuage the jitters of a sport terrified by Bolt’s imminent exit for a life of as much rum punch as he can handle, it could be remembered in one of two ways.
Either Bolt is a soothsayer on a par with Jon Landau, who as a junior reporter for Rolling Stone, wrote from Harvard Square Theatre in 1974: “I saw rock and roll’s future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”
Or he is about as effective at judging an heir as Sir Alex Ferguson, whose own brilliance sat uneasily with his faith in David Moyes and his awkward beseeching of Old Trafford to “get behind our new manager — that’s your job”.
On the surface, it seems ludicrous to presume van Niekerk could ever hold a candle to Bolt’s transcendence.
One is a hard-partying, trainingaverse phenomenon who has called himself a “living legend”, making a memorably seamless transition last year from Rio’s Olympic Stadium to a London party schedule that would have challenged Charlie Sheen.
The other is a delicate, soft-spoken, ultra-devout South African, who is trained by a grandmother-of-five and whose idea of indulgence is to quote from First Corinthians.
Van Niekerk’s astonishing 400m world record in Rio, where he ran 43.03s from lane eight, was a neat metaphor for his career, in which he has been content to make dazzling statements from the margins. Not for him the grand excesses of dear Usain, striking a “Lightning Bolt” pose with the host mascot for the benefit of a thousand cameras.
His first response on winning the world title in Beijing in 2015, in 43.47s no less, was to exchange a few bashful hugs with his rivals and then throw up. Moments later, he found himself pressed about whether he was on drugs.
There has never been any suggestion of doping in van Niekerk’s rise, and it is his capacity to run eyewatering times clean on which athletics would love to hang its hat. But it is only half the battle.
Bolt captivates because his insouciance is every bit as stunning as his talent. Had he not thumped his chest 20m from the line at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 100m record would likely be a good deal lower than the 9.58s to which he took it 12 months later. He loves to add a pyrotechnic flourish because, well, he can.
The truest measure of his greatness is that even though his times have been declining for the best part of eight years, he still, aged 30 and just 38 days out from his final encore in London, stands supreme.
Van Niekerk, by contrast, is so understated that it took all his courage to introduce himself to Jordan Henderson, captain of his beloved Liverpool, last December.
“I was a bit shy to stop the guys and ask them for a picture,” he said.
Where Bolt’s preferred celebration is to tear across the West End with a harem of groupies, his nominated successor likes nothing better, once he crosses the line, than to slip quietly into the background.
One thing is for sure: van Niekerk cannot hope to bestride his sport a` la Bolt if he limits himself as a onelap specialist.
The 400m is a noble enterprise, and perhaps the toughest distance of all to pace, but these days it is not the realm where immortals dwell.
Who, for example, remembers Jeremy Wariner? In the late 2000s, Wariner, seldom seen without his wraparound shades, looked every inch the world-beater. Of the 67 times recorded under 44s, nine belong to Wariner.
And yet the last anybody heard of Wariner, whose form later collapsed, he was running a sandwich shop in Dallas.
There is no coincidence, then, that van Niekerk is also contemplating a tilt at the 200m, Bolt’s favourite event, at the London world championships next month. His credentials to be acclaimed as a superstar mandate as much.
Michael Johnson famously carved a niche for himself in the 200m-400m double, and this graceful son of Bloemfontein has the versatility to follow suit.
In the Czech Republic on Wednesday night, he became the first person to have run sub-10s for 100m, sub-20s for 200m, sub-31s for 300m and sub-44s for 400m. Ostensibly, he can take his pick.
The deeper worry is that unless van Niekerk produces another epoch-defining feat in London, Bolt’s retirement will bring a prolonged and bitter period of reckoning.
At the Rio Games, the only track and field sessions that packed out the house were those with Bolt’s name on the bill. Daley Thompson once went so far as to argue that Bolt was the only reason athletics was not ranked alongside tractor-pulling or mud-wrestling as a fading, neglected niche activity. So the burden on van Niekerk’s slender shoulders this year is colossal.