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Has Usain shot his Bolt?
For the first time in years the planet's fastest man is looking vulnerable. Simon Turnbull reports on whether the unthinkable might happen when he defends his sprint titles at the World Championships in South Korea
Asafa Powell is sitting in a Birmingham hotel, a black beanie hat pulled tightly over his shaven head. "This is like the North Pole for me," he says.
The heat will soon be on for Powell, the fastest man in 2011, and for his Jamaican compatriot Usain Bolt, the fastest man of all time, in the battle for the World Championship 100m title. The first-round heats take place at the Daegu Stadium in South Korea next Saturday. The final will be at 12.45pm British time a week today.
The question in the wake of the last World Championships in Berlin two years ago was how much quicker the Lightning Bolt might be able to strike. Having knocked lumps out of his own world records for the 100m and 200m, reducing them from 9.69sec to 9.58 and from 19.30 to 19.19 respectively, the world was wondering what the magical Bolt might do for his next trick.
A 9.4sec 100m, perhaps? A sub-19sec 200m? There was even talk of the just-turned 23-year-old expanding his horizons to embrace new challenges. The 400 metres, maybe? Or even the long jump?
Two years on, the questions have been lowered from the fantastical to the pragmatic. Such as: will Bolt even win the 100m in Daegu? And, from the long-term point of view: has the Jamaican phenomenon possibly even shot his bolt on the world record front?
A Bolt win is not the foregone conclusion that it once was. After he clowned his way to victory in the Olympic 100m final in Beijing in 2008, clocking a world record 9.69sec despite applying the brakes and celebrating some 20 metres out, one newspaper published a cartoon of the beanpole sprinter lazing in an armchair beyond the finish line, puffing on a cigar and enquiring of his still-toiling rivals: "Where have you been?"
Entire article:
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/g...t-2341305.html
For the first time in years the planet's fastest man is looking vulnerable. Simon Turnbull reports on whether the unthinkable might happen when he defends his sprint titles at the World Championships in South Korea
Asafa Powell is sitting in a Birmingham hotel, a black beanie hat pulled tightly over his shaven head. "This is like the North Pole for me," he says.
The heat will soon be on for Powell, the fastest man in 2011, and for his Jamaican compatriot Usain Bolt, the fastest man of all time, in the battle for the World Championship 100m title. The first-round heats take place at the Daegu Stadium in South Korea next Saturday. The final will be at 12.45pm British time a week today.
The question in the wake of the last World Championships in Berlin two years ago was how much quicker the Lightning Bolt might be able to strike. Having knocked lumps out of his own world records for the 100m and 200m, reducing them from 9.69sec to 9.58 and from 19.30 to 19.19 respectively, the world was wondering what the magical Bolt might do for his next trick.
A 9.4sec 100m, perhaps? A sub-19sec 200m? There was even talk of the just-turned 23-year-old expanding his horizons to embrace new challenges. The 400 metres, maybe? Or even the long jump?
Two years on, the questions have been lowered from the fantastical to the pragmatic. Such as: will Bolt even win the 100m in Daegu? And, from the long-term point of view: has the Jamaican phenomenon possibly even shot his bolt on the world record front?
A Bolt win is not the foregone conclusion that it once was. After he clowned his way to victory in the Olympic 100m final in Beijing in 2008, clocking a world record 9.69sec despite applying the brakes and celebrating some 20 metres out, one newspaper published a cartoon of the beanpole sprinter lazing in an armchair beyond the finish line, puffing on a cigar and enquiring of his still-toiling rivals: "Where have you been?"
Entire article:
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/g...t-2341305.html
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