Bolt still rules 100, but hears footsteps
DE GRASSE, BROMELL CHASING LONG SHADOW OF SPRINTING LEGEND
It is another Olympic year, and Usain Bolt still rules the 100 metres, if only by a hundredth of a second.
But while Bolt bides his time in Jamaica ( and elsewhere) and sits out the indoor season, the next generation of sprinters is busy cashing in and giving chase, hoping against the odds to catch him before he is gone.
Doing so would be particularly good for their startup businesses because Bolt — even in the vast sea of track and field’s troubles — remains a global source of fascination, even good vibrations.
“My thing is, anybody who says another person is not touchable in their sport or in life doesn’t believe in God because, with God, anything can happen,” Trayvon Bromell said this week.
Bromell, a 20- year- old American, is one of the youngsters sprinting fastest in Bolt’s long shadow. Bromell and Andre De Grasse, a 21-year-old Canadian, tied for the bronze medal in the 100 at the world championships in Beijing last year when they were still amateurs.
They are now running 60-metre races on the indoor circuit while continuing their studies. Bromell remains enrolled at Baylor University. De Grasse has left the University of Southern California to train with the Altis program in Phoenix under the sprint coach Stuart McMillan. De Grasse is still taking one course online and plans to finish his degree after the Olympics.
De Grasse made his professional debut in the Millrose Games in New York on Saturday, a win. Bromell finished second in the 60 at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix, behind Mike Rodgers, six days earlier in Boston.
No teenager — not even Bolt, when he was one — has run the 100 faster than Bromell, whose time of 9.84 seconds at June’s USA Track & Field outdoor championships came when he was 19.
But Bromell lost to De Grasse in both the 100 and the 200 on the same day at the 2015 NCAA outdoor track and field championships, also in June. Bromell could not quite beat De Grasse in Beijing either, as they tied for third in 9.92 seconds, behind Bolt, who finished in 9.79, and Justin Gatlin, who finished in 9.80.
That was a particularly stirring victory for Bolt, and not just because it came against Gatlin, who has served two doping suspensions. Bolt had competed little over the last two seasons because of injuries; Gatlin, even at age 34, had racked up the season’s best times and had dominated the event in Bolt’s absence.
And yet that stirring victory also had the look of a last hurrah in the 100 for Bolt, whose times and margins of victory have continued to shrink in what remains the sport’s signature event.
His world record of 9.58 seconds dates to the world championships in Berlin in 2009. Since then, he has falsestarted and been disqualified from the 2011 world championships in Daegu, South Korea; won the 2012 Olympic gold in London in 9.63; won the 2013 world title in Moscow in 9.77; and won the world title in Beijing in 9.79.
More slippage is likely to mean no third straight Olympic 100- metre gold in Rio. The 200 — long Bolt’s favourite sprint — looks like a safer haven, if he can stay healthy and motivated. Though he has avoided being too specific about 100- metre times, he continues to talk about his goal of breaking 19 seconds in the 200 before he finishes his career.
What is clear is that Bolt is 29 and will be one week short of his 30th birthday when the 100-metre final is run in Rio de Janeiro in August. That is past a sprinter’s typical peak, but Bolt — a tall man with a quick turnover — is anything but typical. And there are also precedents for gold at his advancing age.
Donovan Bailey was 29 when he won the 100 at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Linford Christie was 32 when he became the oldest Olympic men’s 100 champion in history in Barcelona in 1992.
No one, by the way, is rushing him out the door — certainly not the besieged leaders of his discredited sport, who know that he is, until tested or proven otherwise, the only high-profile antidote to the ambient negativity.
“I think it’s his last Olympics, I really do,” said Ato Boldon, a former world-class sprinter who is now an NBC analyst. “I think he may run another worlds, maybe even two, but I think it’s his last Olympics, and I hope the sport is ready to fill that void that’s going to be left when he’s gone. Quite frankly, he’s one of the very few things that keep anybody looking in our direction anymore. That’s just the reality.”