Mistake of a mortal

Everyone knew. No one wished to believe it, but everyone knew including the man himself. As the eight men crouched on the starting blocks moments before the men’s 100m World Championship final all eyes were fixed on Usain Bolt. No one missed it. No one blinked. Everyone saw the six-foot five-inch phenomenon, the reigning World and Olympic champion - the fastest man to ever run - jump before the gun was fired. Not even athletics’ version of Superman can beat the bullet out of the barrel.

Bolt knew. He knew immediately. There was no hiding, no escaping this. No rewind or erase button. Even before he pulled up, after hearing the second gun, he had removed his Jamaican singlet. He turned, walked back past the blocks, beyond the lane sign and away towards the tunnel. The unbackable favourite did not conduct a sit-down protest like American Jon Drummond in Paris, 2003, nor a face-saving ceremonial run down the straight like Linford Christie in Atlanta, 1996. Bolt simply tried to come to grips with what he had done, and how he could let his legacy be stained by such a monumental error.

Since January 1, 2010, the IAAF changed the false start rule for all competitions globally. One false start means automatic disqualification. Prior to that, in Drummond’s case, the second false start of the race irrespective of the culprit meant disqualification. Prior to 2003, all athletes in the race could afford to false start once before their second personal break caused their withdrawal. The hot Atlanta night in 1996 saw the Olympic 100m final started four times. Christie broke twice while Trinidad and Tobago’s Ato Boldon was attributed the other.

The changes were designed to stamp out the ‘ducks and drakes’ that had plagued major 100m finals over the years, not to rub out the sport’s only truly global star at its greatest showpiece outside of the Olympic cycle.    

But the rules are the rules. And Bolt has no one to blame but himself. He spoke in the lead-up of building his legacy in South Korea. It was the first title he had to defend. It seemed a fait accompli. His greatest rivals, 2007 World Champion Tyson Gay and former World record holder Asafa Powell, second and third fastest all-time respectively and the only sub-9.80 runners this year, were absent through injury. The next two fastest this season, Jamaican Steve Mullings and American Michael Rodgers, were also absent through drugs suspensions. The fourth fastest runner of all-time Nesta Carter stood two lanes away from Bolt on the start line and although within his countryman’s enormous wingspan, Carter in reality was not in the same stratosphere in terms of form and top speed.

The only man who could beat Bolt was Bolt himself. And so it proved.

Starting has always been his Achilles heel, but not his kryptonite. For such a big frame it is unsurprising he is slow off the blocks. Sprint coaches speak of the “drive phase” from the gun to the 50m mark. The key to a smooth transition from the starting crouch to full extension and top speed is to keep head and chest down for as long as possible. No more astute a judge than Boldon, himself a former world champion and four-time Olympic medallist, believes if Bolt made adjustments to his start he could easily break 9.50.

Perhaps Bolt thought that was what he needed to do in Daegu. It wasn’t enough to cruise to victory in a leisurely 9.8 seconds. He had a reputation to uphold as a big-time performer. Thus he perhaps wanted to eke out every advantage he could to run as fast a time as possible without being in peak-form. He wanted to create a greater shock than that he achieved in Berlin. He achieved a shock all right. He left the world gobsmacked.

The race itself was an afterthought, given the gaping hole that could not be ignored in lane five. So rattled were those watching the world feed television commentator, Peter Matthews, failed to call winner’s name at any point throughout the race.

Twenty-one year old Jamaican Yohan Blake won by the biggest margin in the history of the event at the World titles. But unfortunately for Blake his win will forever have an asterisk next to it. The crown he had inherited had come after the king had fallen on his sword.

Alex Malcolm