Usain Bolt runs a 9.58 second 100m today....Come on....This guy can't be human.

I think thats a world record

uh, yeah.........by a mile. Can anyone alive beat it? I have my doubts.

he can.

i think he can get sub 9.5. its pretty ridiculous that tyson gay ran 9.71 and got beaten too.

Its scary that he could get even better!

So is it a world record?

Just slightly!

He beat his own record by 0.11 seconds, which in spriting is a very big margin.

Unbelievable. It was good to see him run a race flat out for once, so I thank Tyson Gay for at least pushing him slightly, otherwise he'd have just jogged over the line again.

I think he can go under 9.5 in his lifetime. 200m still to come too.

Yea James, I was going to say the same about him running flat out. I wonder if Gay could break that time without chasing Bolt.

Bolt said he can hit 9.40 a while ago.

yeah he is super scary. So bad with athletes nowadays you just worry that down the road you are going to hear about them testing positive for steroids.

I think Bolt has been so good for athletics, in getting viewing figures/attendances way up recently. It's just what the sport needed, it's been revitalized... if he tested positive for steroids now, it would cripple the sport completely. Luckily, I really don't think he's on anything, he's just a natural freak of nature.

i missed it, did he even try at the end? he never seems to actually completely give it his all, which is quite possibly the most insane scary thing ever, since he seems to be on cruise and if he ever actually pushed it....

He finally gave it his all, well maybe not the last the 10.

Phenomenal. I'm not sure about giving it his all though. He looks round for Gay and then looks at the clock before he crosses the line so I think with 100% concentration and effort (last night was probably 98%) he will go 9.4.

I think he's more likely to do a sub 9.5 time at another meet rather than the Worlds/Olympics just because he won't have other events like the 200m and relays to think about. And the 200m is his baby, he'll want to lower that mark again this year.

The other thing about Bolt is we're going to see a new generation of sprinters, not as many Powell/Greene body shapes but more basketball/American football tall, rangey guys with huge strides so maybe there will be someone in the future to do Superman times. Until then though, may Bolt reign supreme!

Is it too much to think Bolt could go under 19 seconds with perfect conditions, in the 200m?


9.58 x 2 = 19.16 but he doesn't have to start from a standstill obviously at the 100m mark, he'll be flying. I don't know, but it would be insane.

If he goes under 19 in the 200 I think the fabric of time and space will change a la Superman and Star Trek.

It certainly no unfeasible that he goes 9.xx for the first hundred and 8.xx for the 2nd. As you say he will have built up speed coming into the 2nd 100 and that could make the difference. I think Powell's split in the Olympic relay final was 8.8x so Bolt could well do it.

<19s would be one of the greatest moments in sport, never mind athletics! But I'd settle for another WR.

Another WR! 19.19 in the 200m.



edit - He was running into a slight headwind too.

this guy cannot be real. He is not breaking world records he is obliterating them. Finally, the US sports media is waking up to the fact that Bolt not Michael Phelps is the real giant to emerge from the Beijing olympics. Swimming is nice and all (my wife actually held the 50m freestyle record at Penn for a year or two) but being the world's fastest man has way more prestige.

This is cool.

I wonder if he'll spawn a new generation of really tall sprinters? Is there any chance that tall American athletes will be tempted to get into athletics rather than basketball, or is the money gap too much? I'm not sure exactly how much your average, not very famous, NBA player gets paid.

The average NBA salary is over $5 million per year, so probably not.

Also, he couldn't even keep up his 100m pace over another 100 meters. Weak.

I did not see this. I am aghast right now. I remember when 10 secs was an accomplishment, that was just over a decade ago.

.02 is a big difference at this length of race, .11 is almost not competitive.

EDIT: JJJ I bet he gets faster in the 2nd part of the 100. Breaking 19 is possible for him. He is long and lanky, so he is not good out of the block. He probably hits his top speed around 60 meters which he could keep up for another 100-120 meters.

Ah, well he might be a one off in that case.


Btw, his split for the second 100m was 9.3. It was the first 100 on the bend that slowed him down.

Weak.

Forget gender testing, let's make sure Bolt is from this planet!

In an effort to put his performance in the 100 in to a context that everyone can appreciate, ESPN's track and field guy said they performed some analysis that concluded if he were to run the 40 at the NFL combine he would finish in 3.8.

I also read that there is somewhat of a consensus that it is plausible that he is clean because he has been totally dominant relative to his age group for years, as evidenced by the fact that he apparently began running the 200 under 20 consistently when he was 17. And also he might have a vast financial incentive to break world records as frequently as possible as opposed to really focusing on running the perfect race.

From ESPN.com:


This is what happens when you're Usain Bolt. You smash your own world record in the 100-meter dash -- impressing onlookers by not deploying parachute airbrakes -- and for an encore you pull off the same feat in the 200-meter race. Next, won't-be-fooled-again American sports commentators wring their hands over the very, very sad yet very, very real possibility that you may be ingesting performance-enhancing drugs, a possibility seldom suggested about fellow too-good-to-be-true athletic marvels Michael Phelps and Lance Armstrong. After that, said American sports commentators get to the subject that really interests them.

Namely, would Usain Bolt be any good at catching footballs?

Never mind our inexplicable national obsession with the soon-to-be-prime-time, multinight NFL draft. Never mind the Dallas Cowboys' new megabucks stadium, a stately pleasure dome tricked out with a measureless-to-man HD JumboTron. If you want a perfect indicator of just how ready America is for football -- how squirmingly desperate we are for the smallest hint of what Roger Goodell is pushing -- look no further than Bolt. Again and again, the question is posed: Sure, 9.58 and 19.19, very impressive, but can he run a go route? And again and again, the same answer spouts forth, clichéd and dull, generally from serious-sounding football men: Speed is different in pads, football is physical, safeties will clean his clock, the first time Bolt gets hit he'll run back to track ... In essence, America's athletic-industrial complex (A) normalizes Bolt's historic, moon shot-impressive accomplishment by putting it into a speculative football context, and (B) demeans Bolt by noting how much HARDER and TOUGHER football is, and how wussy sprinters don't want ANY PART of a MANLY MAN'S game.

When sports fans and commentators in other nations watch Bolt put one foot in front of the other faster than any human being ever, do they immediately ask what sort of soccer player he would make, and then dismiss the idea? Or are we just that insecure?

It's probably quite natural to imagine someone who has his immense speed doing another sport. American Football is the most obvious one, because you have someone who runs really fast to catch the ball don't you? (I know absolutely nothing about American Football, as you might be able to tell)

For us, it'd be rugby. It wouldn't be football (soccer), because while speed is important it really means nothing if you can't control a football. Actually, I think if he played rugby he would be pretty good... as long as he can catch a ball, put him out on the wing and watch him fly.

Another reason Americans probably think of this kind of thing more, is that I only found out recently that Americans really don't give a shit about track and field unless one of their own is participating. Even then, I don't think it's that popular right? That probably explains why the money isn't that good actually... if America took more interest, they'd be more money involved, quite simply. So, much of America don't care for what he's done by winning 100m races faster than anyone, but they do appreciate his speed, so want to 'Americanize' him by associating him with one of your sports. That's my theory to that, anywho.

america cares about track during the olympics. pretty much no other time. which is def a bummer. also a lot of american sports commentators dont understand that a sport does not just have to be repeated physical contact over and over, as there is minimal appreciation for the pure speed of track, or the movement in soccer, or the skill in cricket. cuz if it ain't american, it can't be manly, since we invented both man and manliness.

For me I have always been amazed by track and field. the thing is as time has gone on it seems that so many of the big named stars test positive for something. I know you can say this has happened in baseball but I think the big difference for me personally is baseball has been my number one love from small kid time and I just love to watch it.

I found it amazing when you said you really have no idea about american football cause I thought the exact same thing when you mentioned rugby. Amazing how something can be so big in another country and in your country be just a footnote.

People do the same thing with Lebron James (imagining him as a TE or WR) or with Shaq (DE/DL) in regard to imagining them on the football field. I think it's more our fascination with Football than anything.

Yea it would be rugby but to answer the question; I don't think any other commentators would do that.

This. At some point, the NFL became the undisputed king of sports in America. I think it is precisely because it is all ours (America's) and unlike baseball or basketball nobody else seems to care to play too. (NFL Europe was incredibly unpopular except in Germany.....Canada seems to like it well enough....I read somewhere that a Canadian university will actually be playing DII football this year....but that's about it.)

And because football is awesome. The NFL is much more financially successful than the other major sports leagues and seems to be recession proof. As an added bonus, it is virtually impossible to have a competitive advantage purely due to monetary reasons (a huge knock on baseball and the Premier League). Buffalo, Pittsburgh and KC can compete just as well as New York, Chicago, DC, etc.

There is tons of ancillary evidence too. Steroids in baseball, PEDs in track/cycling.....that is a huge story. Steroids in football? yawn. High profile stars keep going to jail? Interesting but it wont stop us from watching for one second. Whereas the NBA is still shaking off player behavior issues even though most of the NBA's stars recently are very very well behaved. The NFL is a goliath that shrugs off everything and makes money.

So, to try and boost interest in track and field, American journalists are playing the could Usain Bolt be a WR game. This idea is not that new.....ever since the Cowboys turned Bob Hayes into a hall of famer people have been obsessed with turning sprinters into wide outs. Other coaches have brought up the idea of converting sumo wrestlers (with their combo of tremendous girth and surprising agility) into offensive lineman (which never happened because sumo wrestlers make huge money in Japan). This is pretty par for the course.....though it would be nice if we could just savor watching the fastest guy who ever lived.

Since Canadians have been playing football for as long or longer than Americans have the fact that Canadians like football shouldn't be surprising.

I read a quote from a Canadian track coach who saw Bolt when he was about 16 or 17 that Bolt was killing his age group but had horrible technique at that time so he knew that he would be a beast when his technique caught up to his natural skills.

Total random fact.

Last Friday night I ran into Ben Johnson who was sitting on a patio having dinner in downtown Toronto.

How did his testosterone level look?

Not the case, no sprinter is moving faster over the last say quarter of the race the ones pulling away are just slowing down less.

And when they compare splits for a 200 metre its deceiving because the 2nd 100m they are beginning at stride.

That was my whole point.

It was a truly incredible performance. I wonder when they would start insinuating that he intakes the clear or something else undetectable.

If I were him I'd be very wary of whatever I eat or drink, and have multiple people testing out my food and beverages.

He is a freak of nature, so I don't think he'll get the drug accusations like some of the others have received. He is super young, and his tall lean physique makes him a very unique athlete. TBH, with all of the crap that track and field has received in the last 8 years, I bet they don't want to find anything nor will they be looking all that hard.