The Fastest Man Alive

by Usain Bolt

Mr. Coleman was determined I should go to the Olympics, hamstring troubles or not, and we worked and worked to try and get me fit. But then I picked up an Achilles tendon injury in training when turning to avoid another athlete who had stepped across me. It wasn’t serious, but it set me back again.

  I wasn’t bothered about going to the 2004 Olympics. It was too early for me, too soon in my development, and I wasn’t going to win based on how unprepared I was. My preference had been to do the world juniors in Italy and defend my 200m title. It annoyed me that the guy who went on to win the juniors in my absence, an American-born athlete representing Italy called Andrew Howe, who is now a long jumper, had talked about how much he wanted to run against me and what he was going to do to me, blah, blah. He ran 20.28 to win and I was like “please”! – I was running 19.93.

  The Olympics should have been an occasion to look forward to. It is a significant moment in any athlete’s career, but given my poor condition I couldn’t think about enjoying it. I’d talked to the coach, my parents and Mr. Peart and told them my workload was too much, that I was being pushed too hard, but nobody was listening.

  Coming out for my 200m heat in Athens I knew it was a complete waste of time being there. I didn’t have the heart for it. I could have got into the first four and reached the next round but I wasn’t interested. I was in fifth place approaching the finish and could have got past the athlete ahead of me but didn’t bother. It didn’t make any sense. Even if I’d made it through, I was never going to be able to do anything and go further. I wanted to get out of Greece, which had been a very bad experience for me.

  I returned to Jamaica deflated and into a wall of criticism from the public, who had been expecting great things. I explained about my injury, but in Jamaica they don’t understand or care about excuses. The feeling was that if I was injured I shouldn’t have gone to the Olympics. They were cussing me and looking for other reasons for my failure. The talk was that I was going out too much and wasn’t dedicated enough.

  The reaction got me down for a while, but it taught me that the most important thing is to go out there and do it for yourself, and not to worry about pleasing other people. If you win they will be happy and if you fail they won’t. It’s as straightforward as that.

  My relationship with Mr. Coleman wasn’t helping. It was not good; he didn’t understand me. I had heard good things about Glen Mills, who was a coach to the Jamaican team and also trained athletes at the High Performance Centre. He was more of a sprinters’ coach than Mr. Coleman, and the other guys were doing well with him, so I asked Mr. Mills to take me on, then left it to Mr. Peart to negotiate.

  Glen Mills had coached many top athletes, including the 2003 world 100m champion Kim Collins, and was so different to all my previous coaches. He discussed things with his athletes and worked with them. He didn’t just tell you what to do like a teacher in class.

  He began by trying to find out the reasons for my many injuries and sent me to various doctors, until one discovered the scoliosis and said it explained my hamstring problems. It was a relief to find out, and although it was suggested I should give up athletics, me and Coach saw things differently. We took it as a positive, because at last we knew what we were dealing with and could plan training accordingly.

  I soon came to trust Mr. Mills completely. If I told him I couldn’t do something or didn’t think an aspect of training suited me, he would talk to me about it. If he then still decided he was right, he would explain why and tell me to get on with it. That was fine by me. I had full confidence in him and that he was making the correct call. Turning out top athletes was Mr Mills’s job, and he knew how to do it. He had a lot of experience from years of going to the Olympics and World Championships and knew what made winners and losers. He told me about the good athletes and the bad athletes, where they were strong, where they were weak and why.

  While I do the mental and physical work, Coach fine-tunes me, like a mechanic with a top-of-the-range sports car. If you put a big turbo on a car but you still feel you should be getting more from it, you take it to the Dyno shop where they do a complete check and tweak little bits all over to get that bit more out of its performance. That is what Glen Mills does with me.

  He understands that I’m lazy and that I might miss training. That’s how I am. He doesn’t get mad with me, he lets it go, but if I’m absent from more than one day’s training he will be calling me asking what’s up and why I’ve not been there. I respect him totally and if he says we need to buckle down, I will buckle down, even if that means no partying for a month. People who don’t know him properly think he’s grumpy, but we have a laugh together. He doesn’t much like the media, though, and rarely gives interviews.

  In 2005 I won the Central American and Caribbean Championships. They did not provide the strongest opposition, but the idea was not to go up against any stiff competition and stress the body out. The plan was to ease my way through to the World Championships in Helsinki. We weren’t expecting me to make the 200m final in Finland, because of all my injury problems, and it was a surprise to get there at all. In the end I got a cramp 60 meters from the line when challenging for the lead and hobbled over the finish line in about 26 seconds, a long way behind the winner Justin Gatlin. It had been pouring with rain, it was cold, and the start kept being delayed by one athlete who was fiddling with his blocks, then couldn’t get his feet right on the pressure censors. I’d never run in rain like it, and because of my injuries getting a cramp was not such a shock.

  Coach also said that by running the corner so hard and being so tight on my body it put a hell of a strain on my hamstring. We later discovered there was a small tear in the hamstring, which wasn’t too serious, and I went back to Dr. Müller-Wohlfahrt to get patched up.

  Far from leaving me downhearted, that final gave me a lot of belief. I’d been up there with the leaders from the hardest lane, the one with the sharpest corner and which is especially difficult to run if you are as tall as I am. It is one of the reasons why in the heat you always want to be sure of being one of the fastest qualifiers, because that way you get a better draw in the middle lanes. I don’t think I would have won, with the likes of the Americans Tyson Gay and Wallace Spearmon in the race too, but I would definitely have made the top six. It was very encouraging.

  The following year, 2006, was not a big year in our program. Coach thought it best not to go to Melbourne for the Commonwealth Games after I picked up a slight strain at the Gibson Relays in Kingston. Missing out on Melbourne didn’t bother me. I believed in what we were doing and our long-term goal that it would all come together from 2007 onwards.

  But Jamaicans were having serious doubts about me. They questioned why I hadn’t made the progress they felt I should have done since winning the world juniors. Every year I’d started well then faded away, and it was said that I’d never make it to the very top of the sport. There were even claims I’d been paid to pull up at the World Championships because, according to some commentators, the way I stopped wasn’t the way you should do it if you got cramp. Around the world most people understood that finely tuned athletes get injured, but not in Jamaica – you have to win whatever the circumstances.

  As I saw it, I was young, time was on my side, and I had become more hardened to the criticism, having gone through it after the 2004 Olympics. I felt bad at letting people down but, whereas in the past my priorities had been about pleasing the public, they were now about putting myself first. If I was successful, the rest would fall into place. Coach explained that injuries were part of track and field, that they happened to everyone at some time in their lives, and what you’ve got to do is find out what caused them and move on.

  I earned my first senior medal in September of 2006 – a bronze over 200 meters at the World Athletics Final in Germany behind Wallace Spearmon, who was second, and Tyson, who got gold. A week later I took silver at the IAAF World Cup in Athens, which Wallace won.

  It was annoying the way Wallace was always f
ractionally ahead of me, and I wondered why. Coach had told me to learn to lose, because by doing so you could figure out what you needed to do to win. There was always a reason for losing, and I realized I was looking behind almost as soon as I started every race. This was slowing me down and costing vital time. So I said to myself one day that I would try not looking behind for as long as possible. I managed to do that until coming off the corner and, when I eventually did look back, I was clear. From that moment on, Wallace never beat me again.

  “He’s beginning to believe.” That’s how I thought of Usain. He had begun to believe in his own ability, and in Beijing, China, he realised just what he was capable of.

  I’m a pastor now with the Baptist Union, and I think God presents opportunities to us. We can either drop the ball or catch it. Usain has caught it very well indeed.

  Usain was seven when I first saw him, and I immediately noticed the rivalry between him and Ricardo Geddes. Bolt would win over 150 meters, but Geddes could beat him over 60 meters until Usain eventually got the better of him.

  I thought of Usain as more of a cricketer then than a sprinter When he was in grade three, at the age of eight, he was playing with the 11-year-old boys in grade six . You couldn’t tell the difference because of his height. He batted number three, was a good fast bowler and one of the best gully fielders I’ve ever seen. Any sport he decided to pursue he would have made it, soccer as well . He could play in goal or outfield.

  His father, Gideon, and I had many conversations about his sporting ability and how best to develop it. In recognition of Usain’s talent, he got a scholarship to attend William Knibb High School. I encouraged his father to send him to a school with a strong track and field program. I knew he was intelligent enough to survive there The school gave its complete support.

  I continued passing on little tips for him through his father about what he should do in his races, and Gideon, Pablo McNeil, Dwight Barnett, Fitz Coleman, Glen Mills and myself have all helped him. What I discovered with Usain was that, if he respected you, he would give you 250 percent.

  That is why Glen Mills has been such a success with him. What coach Mills is getting from him now has always been in there. He could run 10.3 seconds for the 100 meters when he was 15, which is blisteringly fast for someone of that age, but it needed someone to take him to the next level.

  I’ve watched all his big races on TV and YouTube. The Olympics and World Championships were absolutely awesome. When Usain won his first gold medal over 100 meters in Beijing it reminded me of the film The Matrix where Morpheous says of Neo, “He’s beginning to believe.”

  THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TYSON GAY AND me has changed since I started setting world records. At the World Championships in Osaka, Japan in 2007 my focus was on trying to match Tyson, who was in tremendous form and the man to beat over both the 100 and 200 meters. At that time I accepted he was better than me and we got along great. It’s not the same now that I’m beating him. Maybe that’s natural, but my improved performances never affected my relationship with Wallace Spearmon, who is one of the coolest guys on the circuit, and we still chill out and enjoy playing video games together.

  To get in shape for challenging Tyson, I wanted to be running as many races as possible. My injury troubles were over after a frustrating two and a half years and I needed to earn some money to make a living. Although the 200 meters was not a major event on the circuit, I was ranked high enough to be able to command those big appearance fees. At a Golden League meeting, which unfortunately didn’t include the 200 meters very often because the 100 meters was deemed more glamorous, you might get another 15,000 dollars for winning, 10,000 for second and so on. If you won all six Golden League races – as my Jamaican teammate Asafa Powell did in the 100 meters in 2006 – you shared in a 750,000 dollar jackpot.

  Going into Osaka I was rather under the radar. No one was looking for too much from me, which I was quite happy about. All the Jamaican attention was fixed on Asafa, who had some injury troubles but was the world 100m record holder and had just won two Golden League meetings.

  We were out there around midday for the heats of the 200 meters, and I eased through in second place while a Greek runner beside me almost burst a blood vessel to beat me by one hundredth of a second. The quarter-finals were the same day in the evening and I won my race, with Wallace just behind, but it was interesting to see that Tyson ran quite a quick time, almost going under 20 seconds. The semi-final the next night had me and Wallace again in the same race. We qualified first and second but Tyson was the fastest, bang on the 20-second mark.

  I went to bed thinking about the final the following day and how I was going to tackle it. Tyson was a fast bend runner, whereas I wasn’t as quick. I tended to lean into the corner, when the best way to do it is to stay up straight.

  I did as well as I possibly could in the final. Coach said it was one of the fastest corners I’d had ever run, but Tyson was leading me by about three meters, winning in a time of 19.76 to my 19.91. There was nothing I could do other than to hang to the silver medal position and hold off Wallace. Getting silver was good. I’d shown, at last, that I could produce in a major championships. While it seemed I’d been around a long time, I was only 21 with a lot to learn. Tyson was 25 with more experience than me. In an interview afterwards I held my hands up and agreed Tyson was the best man on the day. He was in the shape of his life and had done the sprint double, having also beaten Asafa into third place in the 100 meters.

  At Osaka I got another silver in the 4x100 meters relay in which, although Asafa ran his heart out on the last leg, we lost to the USA while edging out Great Britain by one hundredth of a second. We had plenty of speed in our team and broke the Jamaican national record, but our baton changing was absolutely useless, we must have messed up every handover. As a country we only have ourselves to blame for that, because we never practice relays before a competition and don’t have proper training camps like the British and the US do. Our preparation consists of doing a couple of baton passes when we get there and hoping it works out on the night. If you look at Jamaican baton changes over the years they’ve been alright at best, never good or great. We get our results through sheer speed and are forever making up lost ground.

  Back home the reaction to my silvers showed that people were warming to me, but it wasn’t like they were saying, “Hey, brilliant” – it was more “You’re getting there” – and there were more comments about my love of the party lifestyle. Basically the argument went that if I didn’t go clubbing I would be winning gold medals.

  That wasn’t the reason. I just wasn’t strong enough yet, because I hadn’t been doing the full training. While Mr. Coleman had got me doing too much gym work, now I wasn’t doing any and it meant I didn’t have the stamina to complete the 200 meters properly – 20 to 30 meters out I was dying. Coach said I was too weak, and it was what we must work on for the 2008 Olympics.

  I’d been going on at Mr. Mills for a while about doing the 100 meters as well as the 200 like Tyson, partly because there was big money to be earned and the 200 meters was the poor relation by comparison. But Coach had this thing about me doing the 400 meters, which I wasn’t keen on. There was a stand-off, which left me sticking to one event because neither of us could convince the other about what my second discipline should be.

  We made a bet that if I did well in a 100m race in Crete, Greece, before the World Championships he would let me double up in 100 and 200 meters the following season. If I didn’t do well I would do 400 and 200. Training for the 400 meters struck me as hell on earth, so I wasn’t going to blow this opportunity. My time of 10.03 in that first ever senior 100 meters was impressive. The only person in Jamaica running faster than that was Asafa, so I told Coach he had to give me the chance.

  Mr. Mills said he always knew I could run the 100 meters but never wanted me to. He thought I was a more natural quarter-miler, but I didn’t want to do 400 because of the different type of training, which is severel
y hard. I see what these guys have to do when we are training with my team, Racers Track Club in Kingston. In one session the quarter-milers can be running two 600s, two 500s, one 350 and four 300s. That’s a lot of work. You are doing 1200 meters, then 1000 meters, then a 350, then 1200 again, which is crazy. I don’t think I’m made for so much work in one day.

  I can run 45 seconds for 400 meters without doing any of that, which shows I have a lot of talent. But I would have to put the work in if I was going to break the world record, it couldn’t be done without any specific training. I’m capable of the 400m world record but I’m not ready for that yet, I want to keep on with the 100 and 200 meters and leave it at that. The 400 meters might be for the 2016 Olympics after I’ve defended my titles in London, but I will never, ever go any further than that. You will not see Usain Bolt doing an 800 meters, it would kill me.

  It wasn’t until that silver in Japan that it struck me I could be a great athlete. I hadn’t been doing the core gym work which was the staple training of so many athletes, and I’d still finished second. I knew that if I put my heart into it, I could be the best in the world at 100 and 200.

  In only my third 100 meters as a professional athlete, in May 2008, I ran 9.76 seconds during a meet at Kingston’s national stadium – just two hundredths of a second slower than Asafa’s world record. I’d predicted a run of about 9.9 and the time blew me away. I was shocked, and the legendary Michael Johnson said he was amazed at my improvement. There were accusations in the States that the run wasn’t legal, and that with it being in Jamaica there had to be some questions about it, like the clock not working correctly.

  Whatever they thought, our minds were made up that I would run both the 100 and 200 meters at the Beijing Olympics. We didn’t make it public, though, saying no decision had been made and that I might only do the 200 because Coach was worried whether my body could cope with both disciplines.