The Fastest Man Alive

by Usain Bolt

  Two days later Vybz and Mavado had a peace meeting with the Prime Minister and called for the Gaza and Gully battle to end. Mavado said, “I never threw a stone at Vybz and he never did it to me. It is just about music, but we have fans out there and people take it to a different level, so me and Vybz have to talk to these fans and do things to mend the situation.” Vybz agreed, saying, “People need to realize that there has never been any personal animosity.

  Sometimes people take things out of context, especially impressionable minds.”

  That was the end of Gaza and Gully, and it all came to a head at my party. Maybe it was for the best; perhaps the violence had got out of control. But the rivalry had made for some great shows like the Sting Festival, billed “the greatest one-night reggae show on earth”, where you would get both Gaza and Gully artists on stage trying to outdo each other in a lyrics war. Whenever one rapper stumbled over his words he would get it from the crowd, and the winner would be decided by the reaction he generated. Admittedly it did spill over into violence sometimes, but now it’s gone the other way. The show in December 2009 after the peace meeting with the Prime Minister was the most boring thing ever.

  You have to be Jamaican to get Jamaica. The way we act, the way we live and the way we speak is like nowhere else. If I’d written this book in Jamaican patois, or creole as the linguists call it, most of you wouldn’t have understood a word of it. It is not meant to be written down, but it is how many kids and adults speak to one another on the island. We drop letters from the English language and run words together and, while we grow up on it, it’s very difficult to follow for a foreigner. It’s so specialized that even in neighboring Caribbean islands like Barbados or Trinidad they cannot understand us. They have their own forms of it, which are different from ours.

  When I moved to Kingston and started running professionally I had to take special English lessons so that in interviews people would know what I was saying. I had problems with words like three, which I would say as “tree”. I couldn’t work out that you had to roll the words off your tongue. The teacher showed me how to set my tongue to say the word properly. I can adapt now, according to who I’m speaking to, but with friends and family we always use patois. Some native Jamaicans cannot speak proper English at all, they talk patois all the time – and it’s raw patois. When I’m talking to my mom a normal English-speaking person could probably pick up some words, but raw patois is impossible – you would have no chance.

  Jamaica is the type of society where everything can be done tomorrow, and I’m as guilty as the rest. I’ll wake up and think that I have to do two things, then decide, “No, forget it, I’ll do it tomorrow.” Tomorrow comes and you think, “No, the next day” – until there comes a point where you have to do it, and you do it.

  I love the place and the people, even though they gave me a lot of grief when I was younger. They will support you 150 percent, and when the Olympics or World Championships are on, the whole country comes together. Jamaica has a reputation for violent crime but there is none when there is a big sports event on, because everyone is watching TV. Once it’s over, normal life resumes.

  I want us to have a better society, and I try to help kids so they don’t have to go down that path. For some it’s inevitable but for most it’s avoidable and we can help them before they reach adulthood. If you can show kids the right way to go, the way to work hard and the way to be focused, there will be less poverty.

  MY BEST FRIEND IN THE WORLD IS still NJ, or Nugent Walker junior. We have been friends ever since we met on the first day at Primary School and I can’t remember ever falling out with him. We hit it off straight away and now he’s my personal assistant, someone I can turn to at any time of day and night, who is always, always there for me. Sometimes you have friends who you are forever cussing and then might not talk to you for a while, but that has never happened with us.

  The only thing we ever argued about when we were growing up was math, because we were both good at it and would fight over the best way to solve a problem. He was more into his schoolwork than sport – although we played in the cricket team together – as we went from Primary and on to William Knibb High School.

  Throughout the bad times, when I was trying to get over injuries and the Jamaican public were criticizing me, NJ was on the end of a phone to talk to. If he heard things were not going well, he would call and ask what the problem was and between us we’d come up with the best way to go forward and deal with it. During the Olympics and World Championships I could call him no matter what the time difference and he was happy to talk, even if I’d woken him up.

  When I moved to Kingston I wanted NJ to come and share a flat, but he had a job at the airport and was getting a place at college. He also thought that if we were together we’d probably get into too much trouble. After college he wanted to go on to do a business degree, but couldn’t get on the course, so he’s come to work for me while he’s waiting for a place. I’m kind of lazy, and NJ does everything I need, allowing me to get on with being an athlete. When the helper doesn’t come to work, NJ cooks when I get in and deals with all the day-to-day stuff. While Mr. Peart manages me, NJ is the man on the ground. He is the link to the rest of the management team, which now includes a full group – manager, coach, agent, finance director, masseur, and publicist.

  When I’m asleep, people can call NJ to sort things out, and he can go through it with me when I get up, instead of having people trying to call me 40 or 50 times and not getting a reply.

  NJ, Sadiki and I live in my new house in Kingston, which I bought at the start of 2010. It’s a place where me and my closest friends, the ones I really trust, can relax. These aren’t hangers-on who want to be associated with me because I’m the world’s fastest man, they are proper friends. Courtney Walsh junior, the son of the former West Indies fast bowler, often comes over with Jermaine Gonzales. I’ve known Jermaine since I was 14 and we competed in the world juniors together, where he won a bronze in the 400 meters. We also lived together when we were both at the High Performance Centre in Kingston. We are both big soccer fans – I’m Manchester United, he’s Arsenal. Jermaine has been unlucky with injury, and I also felt he spent too long working with Fitz Coleman before I eventually persuaded him to join me at Racers Track Club. Hopefully he will benefit from that.

  My friends and I will watch sports on TV, play video games, and have our big dominoes nights – one of my favorite ways to spend an evening before we go out clubbing.

  Many Jamaicans enjoy dominoes and become quite obsessed by it. To some it’s just a bar game of chance, where you get the dominoes you pick and it depends on what others play as to whether you can put your own domino down. But it’s a very technical game, with a lot of skill involved, especially if you play it in pairs.

  There are 28 dominoes in a set, and seven of everything from double blank up to double six, so you have to learn to read people’s hands and think about what they have. It’s not just about matching the other domino, there’s a lot more to it than that.

  The art of the game is to find a way not to let the others win, so that you can win. I sometimes think I’ve got everything figured out, but then I play against guys who’ve been round dominoes tables for years and they are on another level. Coach Mills is very good, and if he plays with a partner who knows the game too, it’s over-there’s no point even playing against them. I got really good when I played regularly with Courtney Walsh and the reggae singer Beres Hammond, who are real experts. My friends are not in the same league as them, and don’t read the game properly, which can make for some unpredictable contests.

  I never get bored with dominoes. I can play for six hours, no problem, and once did it for eight hours from 8:00 p.m. until 4:00 a.m. without a break. The neighbors must have been pissed about that, we were screaming and cussing. We were playing six-love, in which the aim is to win six straight games in a row. If you do that you get a point, and we play best of three, which is why it can take a
long time. The slam of the domino on the table at the point of victory is the fun of it, as you send all the other dominoes flying off the table.

  We spend a lot of time on the video games too, and I’m well known down at the local video store. They call me up as soon as a new game comes in so I can get it straight away. We are into all the popular ones like FIFA Football, Grand Theft Auto and the war game Call of Duty. You can go online, make up a player name and battle it out against gamers all over the world. There are many people who have played against me without realizing it. Perhaps one day there will be a Usain Bolt athletics game.

  Every Sunday when I’m in Kingston we get a soccer match going up at the UWI pitch. There’s no special protection for me, like a no-tackling rule, it’s proper competitive. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise. You get roughed up, you fall over, whatever, but I don’t worry about getting hurt. You can’t close yourself off from everything and stay in all day.

  I try not to get found out by Coach, though, because he wouldn’t be happy about me playing. He came past me one Sunday when I was going to soccer, but I kept my window wound up. It’s tinted so he couldn’t see me, even though he knew it was my car. When we met up at training the following day he said, “I saw you going to play soccer.” I replied, “Me, Coach? Other people drive my van, you know. Are you sure it was me? What was I wearing?” He couldn’t answer that. We both knew he knew, but he couldn’t prove it.

  I’M NOT A

  CONVENTIONAL

  ATHLETE. I DON'T

  FOLLOW ANY OF THE RULES

  I’m not a conventional athlete. I do what I like, stay up till whatever time I feel like, socialize when I like and eat what I like. I don’t follow any of the rules. For instance, if you asked me what the best food for an athlete is you would be asking the wrong person, and I don’t know anything about the correct balance between carbohydrates and protein. I don’t have a nutritionist like a lot of other top athletes, who have all these charts and are told what to eat at different hours of the day. They would have been horrified by my diet of chicken nuggets throughout the Olympics, but it worked for me.

  Coach goes on about the benefits of pasta – it digests quickly and you can go out training with more energy. I used to eat it to keep him happy, but I don’t bother so much any more, as it doesn’t fill you up and two hours later you are hungry again.

  I’m aware the weight piles on as you get older if you don’t eat the right foods, so I might start taking more notice in a few years’ time. If you train as we do, I don’t think you need be concerned about a diet. You go to the gym, work on your abs, train down at the track and it all burns off. Eat what you want while you can, I say.

  We have a traditional Jamaican dish called Ackee – which is a fruit – and saltfish, which I eat for breakfast. It’s supposedly very good for you, but you have to know what you’re doing. If it’s not prepared and cooked correctly it’s poisonous!

  My favorite food is pork, preferably from Aunty Lilly, accompanied by anything like dumplings, banana and yam – which is like sweet potato. On a Sunday I’ll have what everyone else in Jamaica has, chicken, rice, and peas. Away from the home-cooked specialities the hot wings from Kentucky Fried Chicken are to die for. God, I just love them, cannot get enough. I would happily eat a fry-up too, if it’s put in front of me. The only thing I’m not keen on is onions – not because of the taste, it’s the crunching sound they make. When Mom does onions with rice, she cooks the onions up big so I can pick them out.

  Apart from my love of food, video games, football, and partying, I’m also into cars, fast ones. When we were growing up every teenager wanted a Honda. You could soup them up in different ways, spray-paint them, put turbos on them and, because everyone had one, there were plenty of garages to do the job with all the parts available. These days one of my dreams is to own a Lamborghini. It would be pointless in Jamaica though, as there’s no garage to service it. If it ever broke down you’d be stuck.

  My first car was a Honda Accord, which I wrecked in three weeks. I was about to turn off the road to check out a young lady at TGI Friday’s and stopped to wait for the traffic on the other side to clear. A guy flashed me to let me go, but a car on the inside kept going and crashed full speed into me. There was a massive impact as he smashed through the left-hand door, but fortunately in Jamaica we are right-hand drive. I freaked out at first and tried to get out through the window of the door which had been hit rather than simply opening the door on the driver’s side. I got a cut on the side of my face but otherwise I was unhurt.

  It took a while sorting out the insurance and it was six months before I got a replacement Honda Torneo, which survived undamaged for a year. That was until one morning at the start of the year when I decided I was going to be good and disciplined and go to the gym before training. This guy came out of a side-road into the left-hand lane with me outside him accelerating past. He didn’t look and drifted across into my lane. I honked the horn but he kept on coming. With nowhere else to go I hit the brakes hard but couldn’t stop slamming into the back of him. He got a cracked bumper while my bonnet was pushed in and the radiator busted. I was pissed because the rules of the road say if you hit someone in the back it’s your fault no matter how the accident happened. I got that car repaired and still have it today.

  Those two crashes were nothing like the third one in which my BMW M3 was totally written off. Having had three big smashes makes me sound like a liability, but on each occasion I’ve been going slowly and they weren’t caused by me doing anything reckless. As you can imagine, though, my insurance premiums are pretty high, especially as I own six cars. Apart from the Honda Torneo, I have a Honda Accord, a BMW 335, a Nissan GTR Skyline, a Toyota Tundra truck, and an Audi Q7, all of them in black, my favorite colour.

  The Skyline, which I call my batmobile, is a beautiful sports car which stays in the garage and only comes out for special occasions, while the Tundra truck was a prize for breaking the world record in New York. I didn’t get it delivered until nearly two years later and it wasn’t as good a deal as it sounds. The truck is worth US$40,000, and I had to pay almost as much again in duties and taxes because there are heavy penalties for having such a big machine in Jamaica. I like it, though, and use it all the time as a runaround while NJ drives the Audi.

  I’d like more cars if I had any more drive space to fit them in. If I ever get the Lamborghini I’m going to buy it in the States and leave it in Miami, where I’m planning to buy a three-bed condo. I’m often over there and it’s only an hour’s flight. My ultimate car is an original 1968 Ford Mustang Shelby, which was one of the cars Nicholas Cage stole in the film Gone in 60 Seconds, but I’m going to have to get out and win a few more races to afford one. They are very rare and cost $250,000.

  DANCING IS ONE OF MY GREATEST PASSIONS... apart from running, of course. I like to dance, but not when I’m outside Jamaica, and it has nothing to do with Wallace Spearmon saying I’m no good.

  Being in the spotlight, I too have had my fair share of run-ins with the media. The way people dance in the dance-hall is not necessarily the accepted norm for how individuals should conduct themselves. I was guilty of expressing this art of dancing outside Jamaica and got a lot of criticism – pictures were taken of me and plastered all over the internet.

  The world was clearly not impressed, and from that day on I have acted more responsibly, especially when I am outside Jamaica. It’s because of an incident in Miami, which was blown out of proportion and taught me that once you become famous little things can get you into big trouble.

  This is one of the hazards of fame, but most of the time I’m fine with the attention. I’m a people person and will pose for as many pictures and sign as many autographs as possible. I feel it’s my duty to do so. But I can’t always keep everyone happy. For example, I remember running through Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston to catch a flight. I had 30 seconds to get on the plane or it was going without me. This lady called out saying,
“Usain, I’ve got to have your autograph.” I shouted to her, “Sorry, can’t stop,” and she came back at me with “You’d better stop!” I kept running and made this apologetic face, but she’s probably still cussing me today. It was important to her, and the fact I’m telling the story here shows how much it bothered me. I hate letting people down.

  If it had happened in the United States, or in London, they would have understood me, because they are used to stars not giving autographs or just signing three or four and moving on. In Jamaica you have to sign everything – if you don’t you’re the bad guy.

  It’s impossible for me to hide and disappear into a crowd. Being 6ft 5ins tall, I tend to stand out above others in the street or in the shopping malls. I can walk past someone and see them thinking they recognise me, and even if it takes them a while to realize who it is, they can follow me all the way because I am taller than the average guy. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t such a tall guy. But then, would I be such a great sprinter?

  Life changed after the Beijing Olympics. I couldn’t go anywhere without being surrounded. I got into the clubs a lot easier, though, and was generally treated much better. I didn’t feel guilty about getting ahead in lines or getting the VIP treatment. “I am Olympic champion and a triple world record holder,” I’d say to myself. “If you can’t get special favours after that, when would you get them?”

  Previously I’d only been recognized by those who followed track and field, but now everybody knew me across the world. There are occasions when I crave for that old life back again, like when I’m out for a meal with a girl and I’d just like to be left alone. People will wait and wait and wait for an autograph or a picture, but will always come over and ask in the end. Then when you’ve done it for one, you have to do it for everybody else. They will apologize and say, “This is the last one” – which makes me laugh. How do they know it’s the last one? Do they know everyone in the restaurant?