Bolt on inevitable, gradual decline
Sean Ingle says Usain Bolt has peaked and that from now on the great sprinter’s best will now be found on Youtube
IT SEEMED faintly heretical to think it amid the decibels and worship-delirium of 65,000 people lauding another Usain Bolt 100m victory. And it seems even more so now after Bolt’s scorching finish in the men’s 4x100m relay when, despite the heat and humidity at the Anniversary Games in London last week, he was a 195cm tall monument to cool.
But this is what I suspect: that Bolt – the greatest sprinter of all time and the greatest sporting showman of these times – has peaked. At least when it comes to the 100m, his absolute best performances will no longer be seen in our shared futures but in YouTube clips.
Of course Bolt will provide millions with a quick kneetrembler for years to come. He is a freak. A phenomenon. And a lighthouse in these difficult, murky times for the sport. But will he ever seriously threaten his own world record, set in 2009, of 9.58sec again? I doubt it.
Partly this is down to motivation. Bolt has admitted that he found it ‘‘hard to refocus’’ after London 2012, an entirely understandable reflex. He is a triple world record holder in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay and a six-time Olympic gold medallist. What else is there to achieve?
Bolt’s new goal, he says, is to dominate until 2016 and ‘‘do a three-peat, which has never been done before’’. But that can probably be achieved without mining new depths in the 100m; by running into the 9.7s rather than 9.5s.
In a sense, Bolt is also an unwitting victim of the idiocy of others. The positive drugs tests for Tyson Gay and, to a lesser extent, Asafa Powell, means he has fewer rivals who can scare him into driving his body harder.
Then there are the physical factors which chip away at athletes. Bolt is picking up more early-season niggles, which make it harder to put in the training required to go even faster.
As the world-renowned sprint coach Stuart McMillan explains: ‘‘Even though he is mechanically extremely sound, his programme isn’t great (a ton of over-distance, which puts added stress to the system), his diet is poor (increasing inflammation), his weight programming is not optimal, and his therapy setup is not dialled in. ‘‘Much of these are the realities of staying and training in Jamaica,’’ he says.
Given that Bolt’s best 100m time this year is 9.85sec, modest by his standards, it seems unlikely that at this year’s world championships he will come
Those incredible, fantastical, supersonic 100m times that made the jaw drop – and stay dropped – will remain in the past
close to the 9.63sec he ran at London 2012.
Next year Bolt only has the Commonwealth Games and the Diamond League to shoot for. He may feel he doesn’t need to get in shape to go sub-9.70 in 2014. And by the time the 2015 world championships take place in Beijing he will be 29. That is old for a sprinter. Of the 54 fastest times in history – ranging from 9.58sec in Berlin to 9.83sec – 35 of the times were run by athletes 25 or younger.
As McMillan puts it: ‘‘I honestly feel we have seen the best of Usain, and he is on the backside decline of his career. This is not to say he still won’t win titles, and dominate the scene – I just don’t see him consistently hitting the heights he has before.’’
Of course there are caveats. There always are with Bolt.
Perhaps running at altitude with fast rivals, perfect wind and the latest Red Mondo track surface would help him go faster.
But another scenario is more likely to play out.
Bolt will continue to win and occasionally wow during the next three years.
But those incredible, fantastical, supersonic 100m times that made the jaw drop – and stay dropped – are likely to remain permanently in the past.