About 15 minutes into an interview with Usain Bolt, I felt comfortable enough to ask him whether the shopworn expression, “white men can’t run” was true.
Bolt, the showman who has taken the 100 and 200-metre distances into territory where no man or beast has gone before, widened his eyes and spread that flashbulb-popping smile.
“White men can run alright … but just not as fast as black men.” The last white Olympic champion was back in 1980 at the Moscow Games. Allan Wells, aged 28, became the oldest 100m gold medallist ever, but as he and Cuba’s Silvio Leonard raced across the line as one in 10.25sec, it was also one of the slowest wins of the modern era.
The reason for that was that America, the traditional hotbed of men’s sprinting, had boycotted Moscow in 1980.
However, even America’s current finest, the 100 and 200m world champion from 2007, Tyson Gay, had to bow to the Jamaican who two days ago turned 23. Gay’s legs were a blur in the 100m final at the IAAF World Championships in Berlin last Sunday night, and he dipped in 9.71sec. But the shorter, more muscle-bound of the two sprinters, cut a devastated figure as he looked at Bolt disappear around the bend, responding to the crowd who were still rubbing their eyes at a world record 9.58.
Putting things in perspective. If Bolt had been in the same race as South Africa’s champion, Simon Magakwe, the Jamaican would have hit the line with our man 12 metres behind him, based on his 10.71 performance at the same World Championships.
Scientists had predicted that the human body’s limit for 100 metres is 9.60 seconds, but they are going to have to go back into their manuals and laboratories.
Now that he has achieved what he told me in April was his immediate ambition – “I haven’t been senior world champion yet, so that’s the next goal – I want to keep the competition high and take it to another level.
“I can go faster and I will. But the world stops at 9.40.”
If it can be imagined, Bolt is even more comfortable behind the turntable than he is in front of the TV cameras on the track.
Roy Barboza is the most recognisable name on radio in Boston and arguably one of the pre-eminent hip-hop DJs in the United States. Among his accomplishments is mixing for the Dr Dre/Eminem Up In Smoke tour and he has spun for hip-hop legends LL Cool J, Eve and 50 Cent.
“Usain knows what he’s doing,” Barboza said approvingly as Bolt took over as the exclusive crowd in the PUMA VIP area at the Boston Harbour Fan Pier rocked to the beat a few months back.
The following morning Bolt played down his role. “I have my own DJ studio back home (in Jamaica). Last night I wasn’t playing DJ, I was just having fun. Roy’s turntables are vinyl … I don’t mix on vinyl!”
Having fun, as he put it, is what he does best. Of course, wherever he goes, there’s an entourage, and where there’s an entourage, there are groupies.
“I’m kinda used to all of this,” he said in a soft voice. ‘”But it (the attention) is bigger in Jamaica. There everyone recognises me.”
As for the blatant advances by his female admirers, Bolt gives a shrug. “I know how to handle myself.”
Whatever the world might think of his showboating, an extended period in his company points to a person who has both feet on the ground when he’s not flying down the home straight.
There is Bolt the person and Bolt the athlete.
In conversation Bolt is respectful, and deserves great credit for professionally answering the same questions the world over, for signing autographs, for having his photo taken with strangers, and for giving a journalist a soundbite, no matter how irritating some of the questions are.
It is quite obvious that his demeanour is not an act, and time, especially in the straitjacket of a booked interview, is not really an issue to him. Music, particularly that of Lil Wayne, the American rapper, is an extension of who he is and it relaxes him.
It would be wrong to say that while talking to the fastest man on Earth, the subject of performance-enhancing substances hadn’t crossed my mind. After all, we’ve been here before. It would have been equally wrong to not raise the subject with him.
“Listen,” Bolt says with steely conviction. “I would never go there. I wanted to be a world champion, I wanted to hold the world record, I wanted to be an Olympic champion, I want to be a legend. I want to change the image of this sport.
“Test me for drugs any time, I am an only child, very close to my mom …” and his voice trails off, the sentence not needing to be finished. Betrayal of his mom’s values would be the worst thing imaginable, is the obvious inference.
Can he be coaxed into running the 400m at London in three years’ time? “We’ll have to see about that,” he replied in a modest and calm manner that is so unlike that found in the ego-and testosterone-driven world of men’s sprinting.
Bolt regularly goes back to his roots, particularly to visit his mother and cricket-loving brother in Jamaica. “I started watching cricket when I was five or six.” Surprisingly, for someone who was a fast bowler – though he talks himself into “all-rounder” territory – the people he enjoys watching most are aggressive batsmen.
“Chris Gayle is one of my favourites, and not just because he’s a West Indian cricketer. Others are Matthew Hayden, Kevin Pietersen and Freddie Flintoff.”
At 1.96m he is the tallest world-class sprinter around, but in real terms he is larger than life and a hero to Jamaicans. His situation in Jamaica is not unlike that of the great Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao.
When the “Pacman” fights, all of the Philippines takes note. Special dispensation is given to prisoners to watch the live TV broadcast and businesses close for the day. When his fighting days are over the boxer is going to make a second run at politics and he could well end up presiding over the country, given his widespread popularity.
There’s a parallel here with Bolt. It’s said that during the dizzying few days in Beijing, where the Jamaicans were celebrating gold medal after gold medal, the high crime rate in his home country virtually dropped to zero.
“Yeah, they have told me that,” Bolt says, proudly. “Apparently, for about a week the streets of Jamaica were crime-free. More youths want to be athletes now.”
Which in itself could be an achievement even greater than his sprint world records.
This first appeared in Independent Newspapers in August 2009
This also appeared in Business Day Sport Monthly in August 2009