London 2012: Usain Bolt braced for greatest sprinting showdown in history

Andy Bull, guardian.co.uk, Friday 20 July 2012

They say that the average adult reads at a speed of 300 words per minute when they are paying attention and around double that if they're not. Which means, assuming that you are being conscientious, that Usain Bolt can run the 100m in less time than it has taken you to get to this full stop. Even compared to the 1988 final, which included three world record holders in Carl Lewis, Ben Johnson, and Calvin Smith, this summer's 100m is going to be the most competitive race in the modern era of the Olympics. For the first time since automatic electronic timing was introduced, the field will include all four of the fastest men on earth: Bolt, Tyson Gay, Asafa Powell and Yohan Blake. Justin Gatlin has also qualified. The world record of 9.77sec he set in 2006 would rank him fifth-fastest behind those four, but it was struck off when he was banned for testosterone use. As it is, his current personal best of 9.80sec, set at the US trials on 24 June, ranks him joint-seventh on the all-time list.

At every other Games between 1968 and 2008, at least one of the four fastest men on the planet at the time has been missing, whether it was Jim Hines, Lewis, Leroy Burrell or Tim Montgomery. It is surprising how many Games have taken place without the current world record holder being in the field, let alone all of the top four men in the all-time rankings. The 2012 final may not be the fastest race in history – the weather alone could see to that – but it is bound to be the most fiercely contested.

Tension inhibits speed. The moment a sprinter starts to worry about what the man next to him is doing, his muscles tighten and he starts to slow down. Lewis was guided by the principle, taught to him by his coach Tom Tellez, that "human beings can run full speed for 10 metres", which made it pointless to try and run flat out for the full 100. His rivals, he felt, were so obsessed with getting ahead of him at the start that they began to decelerate by the time they reached 90m, and would tighten up more as they felt Lewis come up on them. "Don't worry about anybody else in the race," Tellez taught Lewis. "Just worry about what you're doing. If they are ahead of you, don't worry, just keep accelerating through 60m to 70m in the race, they will come back to you at the end." Bolt has a similar approach. "Last 10 metres, you're not going to catch me," he says. "No matter who you are, no matter what you're doing, no matter how focused you are, no matter how ready you think you are, you're not going to catch me."

"In the 100m," says Lewis, "a single mistake can cost you victory." He was not talking about technique – Bolt's, for instance, is infamously poor, with too much lateral movement, which pushes him sideways off the blocks rather than propelling him down the track – but the negative thoughts that slip into a sprinter's head during a race. Take this example from the Briton Harry Aikines-Aryeetey at the recent European championships in Helsinki, when he found himself level with the eventual champion, Christophe Lemaitre, in the semifinals: "I panicked a bit because I was actually with him until about 60m, and I was thinking 'Oh my God, I haven't been here for a little while – what do I do?' I think I tensed up before the end." He scraped into the final, where he finished fourth.

Bolt has never seemed to worry about anything much, least of all what anyone else is doing. Plenty has been said about the advantage his height gives him – his legs are so long that at full speed he covers 10 metres in three and a half strides. But it is Bolt's temperament that really sets him apart. Pressure runs off him like water off wax. His shenanigans on the start line at the Beijing Olympics, when he struck poses and played up to the crowd and camera, showed a man at ease with himself and the situation he was in. His finish, when he was beating his chest as he crossed the finish line, was so insouciant that some athletes actually found it offensive.

The doubts that Aikines-Aryeetey describes have been as alien to Bolt as they once were to Lewis, for who, Tellez says, "It got to the point where it wasn't even hard for him to beat people." And then at the 1985 Zurich Weltklasse, Lewis lost to Ben Johnson for the first time. Lewis was never as dominant again, losing to Johnson at the 1986 Goodwill Games, the 1987 world championships, and the 1988 Olympic final. Until, of course, Johnson was banned and the results were overturned.

(Adapted from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/20/london-2012-usain-bolt-100m)