Faster than Lightning

by Usain Bolt

  Missing out on Grosseto in 2004 seemed worse, though, because I’d wanted to deal with this one kid called Andrew Howe, an Italian 200 metres runner with a seriously big mouth (Howe later specialised in the long jump; he eventually won gold in the 2006 European Championships). That boy had been doing a lot of talking during the build-up to the World Juniors, and he’d said all kinds of crap about how he was going to take me down on his home turf. I wasn’t happy, it was disrespectful, and I knew I could have beaten Howe just by cruising down the track, injury or no injury. Shutting him off in the 200 metres would have been a sweet way to silence all the chatter.

  But, damn! My busted hamstring had ended that little contest. As soon as Coach pulled me out of the meet, I turned frosty, and when I saw the headlines from Grosseto once the World Juniors had got under way, my mood grew even darker. Howe had won the 200 in only 20.28 seconds. Though it was his personal best and a time he wouldn’t improve on for the rest of his career, I could have clocked 20.28 seconds in my sleep, given half the chance. But still he bad-mouthed me from the side of the track.

  ‘I wish Usain had been here,’ he said. ‘I really wanted to beat him face to face …’

  ‘Oh God,’ I thought, when I saw the quote. ‘The man clocks 20.28 seconds and he’s still talking? Please.’

  Howe’s hype act didn’t stop there, though. A few years later, while competing in the long jump during the 2007 World Champs in Osaka, he pulled an equally noisy stunt. It was a tight event that year. With one turn left, the gold medal was between Howe and Irving Saladino of Panama, who would later win his country’s first ever gold medal in the 2008 Olympic Games. Everyone in Osaka knew that Saladino was the man when it came to the long jump, but Howe was jumping first and his final distance pushed him into the lead, breaking the Italian national record in the process. The kid went off. He started screaming, tearing at his top and beating his chest. He ran to the crowd, shouting. Even his mom was going wild with him in the bleachers.

  I looked at the scene. ‘Seriously? What’s wrong with this guy?’ I thought. ‘Relax, dawg …’

  And then the funniest thing happened. With Howe going crazy, Saladino slipped out of his tracksuit and eased on down the track. Whenever he ran towards a jump he never pounded the lane, the Panamanian always cruised, so smooth, before flying into the pit. His final jump in Osaka was no different and the new distance smashed Howe’s gold medal spot by 10 centimetres. The crowd went wild, but Saladino didn’t flinch. He didn’t jump around or pull at his vest. Instead he just dusted a little sand from his shoulder and casually walked away.

  It said to Howe, ‘Calm down, now. I’m The Man.’

  It was one of the best things I’d seen at a major champs. I’m just annoyed that I wasn’t able to do something similar for myself.

  ***

  My summer was not big on fun. To hell with the bad back and those tight hamstrings, it was decided that I was going to Athens, whether I liked it or not. And believe me, I wasn’t thrilled. I couldn’t get excited about entering an event when I wasn’t fully fit. The Olympics was supposed to be the pinnacle of a track and field star’s career, but I wasn’t prepared and I was unable to shake off the disappointment of missing the World Juniors. I’d barely competed all season and my lack of fitness was a serious issue.

  My first season as a pro athlete had been a non-starter up to that point. I’d missed most of the 2004 European events through injury, and several race appearances which had been arranged at the start of the campaign were cancelled. Going to Greece was a pain in the ass to me.

  Coach Coleman got worried, he couldn’t work out why I was suffering so much pain in my back and legs, so it was arranged for me to visit Dr Hans Müller-Wohlfahrt, a German specialist who had previously treated back injuries in the tennis star Boris Becker, and some of the Bayern Munich football team. Apparently Dr Müller-Wohlfahrt was a genius, so a trip to Munich was arranged where he could conduct a full medical check-up.

  All the talk was correct. When I arrived in Germany it was clear that The Doc was no ordinary specialist. I was laid out flat on a bed, as his fingers felt along the bumps and grooves of my spine, and he pushed against my hamstrings. When I glanced up, I noticed that his eyes were closed. The man was feeling, sensing my injuries, rather than discussing the pains in my legs and back, or listening out for any yelps of pain. It was an intense scene, and when The Doc first took my foot into his hand and rotated it at the ankle, a nurse said something from across the room. His eyes flicked open. He looked pissed.

  ‘Shush!’ he shouted, before whispering something in German. I have no idea what he said, but I could sense it wasn’t complimentary. That nurse looked embarrassed.

  I was then taken for X-rays, and when the tests were done, Dr Müller-Wohlfahrt held up an image of my spine – and, man, the news was pretty bad.

  ‘Mr Bolt, you have scoliosis,’ he said.

  ‘What the hell?!’ I thought. I’d never heard the word before.

  ‘It is basically a curvature of the spine and it’s quite common,’ he continued, looking deadly serious. ‘For a lot of people this disfunction is treatable with corrective physiotherapy, but I am afraid that yours is a serious case. The curvature of your spine is very severe.’

  He explained that it was a condition that varied from patient to patient, and that it would worsen as I got older. A really severe case could restrict a person’s lungs and add pressure to the heart; it might even damage the nerves. In my case, the spine was curved and my right leg was half an inch shorter than my left. The back pain I’d experienced was the primary symptom. It was also the reason for my hamstring injuries and the continual discomfort in my legs. Because my body had overcompensated for the S-shape in my spine during exercise, I’d pulled my muscles every which way. It didn’t help that I was competing in the 200 metres, where leaning into a track’s curve often positioned my longer left leg above my right, especially if I was running in one of the tighter inside lanes where the angle was sharper.

  My brain went into overdrive. My first thought was to disbelieve the diagnosis; I told myself that the injuries I had experienced were down to the intense training programme rather than any back condition. Maybe my mind was protecting me from the truth, but I figured that it was far easier to blame the physical schedule I’d been working to, rather than to face up to the realities of a long-term spinal problem

  ‘Whatever,’ I thought, ‘I was fine before. If I work on another training programme, I’ll be fine again.’

  I shrugged it off. Stressing wasn’t going to help. Besides, The Doc had work to do, especially if I wanted to get back to the track in quick time. Physiotherapy was prescribed to help ease the muscular pain. But another part of his treatment involved homeopathic medicines. I’d heard through other athletes that calves’ blood injections were a common prescription for his patients, and that sounded freaky to me. Still, everything that was used on my back was carefully administered within all the legal guidelines – nothing sketchy was injected – and Dr Müller-Wohlfahrt’s syringes took away the pressure and pain from my spine.

  Despite the unsettling diagnosis, everyone was still keen that I should appear at the Athens Games. The fact that I was the fastest man over 200 metres that year (and top of the world rankings) meant I wouldn’t need to go through the Olympic national trials. The top two 200 sprinters from the event always qualified automatically for the Jamaican team. Another place was up for grabs, and because I was still ranked higher than the guy who had finished third in trials, I took it even though I was injured. Once it was clear I’d be joining the 100 metres sprinter Asafa Powell and the rest of the Jamaican national team, the pressure of my injuries hit me like a ton of bricks. Everybody was hyping me up as a sensation; they didn’t seem to worry that I was injured. The fans were looking at me to be a star, especially after my success in the 2002 World Junior Championships. In the media, people were saying, ‘Oh Usain’s beaten senior athletes with his CARIFTA times and he’
s such a success at youth level. He’s bound to do great.’

  But that’s when I got worried. I thought, ‘I’m not in shape. How am I going to perform to my A-game?’

  It messed with my head. The Jamaican people were crazy for track and field and I wanted to give them something to go wild about. I didn’t want to let them down. There were more doubts, more questions, just like there had been before Kingston. But this time I wasn’t scared by the expectations or the crowds. I was worried about the way my body might react under competitive strain.

  By the time the Jamaican team arrived in Greece I’d recovered enough from the injuries for my optimism to grow slightly, thanks to physiotherapy and The Doc’s work, but I still wasn’t 100 per cent fit. And while I didn’t think for one minute that I would go home with a medal, I figured I might have an outside chance of making the final. That would have been a serious achievement, because several top names were competing in the 200 metres that year. The Americans Shawn Crawford, Justin Gatlin and Bernard Williams were there, as was the 1992 and 1996 Olympic silver medallist, Frankie Fredericks of Namibia. Just competing against those guys in an Olympic final would have been huge.

  As I worked on my strength and technique in Athens, my fitness levels felt rocky. Every time I began to get stronger, a new, minor injury pulled me back. On the training track a few days before my first race, another sprinter stepped across my lane and as I shifted fast to avoid a painful collision, my ankle twisted. The sudden movement was enough to tweak an Achilles tendon and I was off course yet again. There was no way I could race at 100 per cent in the heats,† and it was touch and go whether I’d be able compete at all. Only on the night before the first race was it decided that I could handle the strain.

  But on the day of the first heats everything fell apart. The sun was beating down in the Olympic Stadium and it was hot, seriously hot, which says a lot coming from a Jamaican. I wilted. The bleachers were half empty and the crowd was flat – there was nothing to give me a psychological boost like the one I’d experienced in the World Junior Championships. I settled myself on the start line with the aim of finishing in first or second place, but when the gun went Bang!, I came out slow.

  ‘Oh God,’ I thought, as my first few strides landed. ‘This is going to be hard.’

  My legs were heavy, and every step felt lousy. I had no energy and my strength had gone to God knows where. I came off the corner still in touch with the group, but the front guys had edged away slightly, they had more power. I hustled, swinging my legs in a desperate attempt to stay with the leading pack, but my speed had fallen away. I was drained.

  I approached the line in fourth place, which would have been enough to get me into the next round.

  ‘Yo, you can regroup from there,’ I thought.

  But the guy alongside me was on my tail, running me close. He wanted that fourth spot much more than I did. His heavy breathing, the sound of his spikes cutting the track, it was all I could hear; when I glanced across I could see the man’s jaw was clamped tight and the veins in his neck looked set to burst. It dropped with me that on any normal day, if I was fully fit, I’d have been out of sight. And that’s when the doubts kicked in again.

  ‘I shouldn’t even be here …’

  ‘My damn injuries …’

  ‘The training programme has been too hard, I’m not 100 per cent …’

  Qualifying didn’t make sense to me any more. Seriously, what was the point? In those split seconds I’d worked out that my strength was busted weak and, even with a day’s rest, I’d probably finish dead last in the next round. To hell with that, I only ever competed to win, and realising that I didn’t have a chance of getting to the final deflated me. I wanted out. Athens had been a stress anyway, so I made the decision to give my place away to the athlete alongside me.

  ‘A’ight, brother, take it,’ I thought. ‘It’s yours.’

  As I crossed the line in fifth, there was a sense of relief. My time in Athens was done, and I figured the pressure would ease up once I’d exited the champs. But I should have known Jamaican fans better. When word got back home about my failure to qualify, not to mention the injuries I’d been fighting throughout the season, everybody went off. Negative headlines appeared in the national press. The public wanted to know why I’d gone to Athens if I hadn’t been fully fit; the fans couldn’t understand why I’d been a shadow of the junior world record-breaking sprinter from the CARIFTA Games.

  Once I returned to Kingston a couple of weeks later, all sorts of theories were bounced around. I was called a ‘baby’ – they pointed to my no-show at the Paris World Champs with pink eye as a sign that I couldn’t handle the pressure of a big event, and Athens was further evidence. Even the crucifix I’d been wearing during my heat in the Olympic Stadium was blamed. It had been a present from Mom,‡ but the cross was too big and it bumped up and down on my chest as I sprinted, so I always gripped it in my teeth. A story ran in one paper criticising the chain.

  If the fans and media weren’t talking about my injury problems, or the crucifix around my neck, then they were criticising my lifestyle. They said I was lazy, and they moaned that I was a party person. The press had seen me going into KFC or Burger King in Kingston and it had annoyed them. If I was spotted going out maybe once or twice to the Quad, a reporter would write that I’d been there all week. I knew there were other athletes going out too, but nobody wrote about those dudes; it was ignored. I could go the same party with another athlete and even though we were photographed together, just chilling, I’d get cussed by the Jamaica media but nobody would say a word against him. It was crazy.

  I guess the fans and media were right in a way: I loved to eat junk food and I liked to party every now and then. Often I would train all week, then at the weekend I’d have only one meal during a 48-hour period. It would start with a club on the Friday night, all night, where there would be dancing, Whining, some conversations. Then, having woken around noon the following day, I’d play video games for hours and hours, usually until my stomach grumbled in the evening. That’s when I’d drive into New Kingston with my brother Sadiki and we’d buy a bucket of chicken, or some burgers. The majority of weekends I ate one fast-food meal during a 48-hour blur of dancing and gaming. I don’t know how I survived.

  The truth was, by the end of the 2004 season, I’d just turned 18; I was immature and going through a learning curve, not that anyone else was taking my growing pains into account. The Jamaican fans hadn’t figured me out; they didn’t understand how I liked to work and play. To them I was a failing star, another gifted athlete squandering his talent. They could think whatever they liked, though. I knew I was fine. My biggest problem was that the training was taking a heavy toll, both physically and mentally.

  ***

  Athens forced me into a decision. It was time to get Coach Glen Mills onboard. I’d been worn down by the work Coach Coleman liked to do. Sure, he was a great hurdles coach and he’d been successful with plenty of other athletes, but the methods he used weren’t suited to how I was as an athlete, or a person. No matter how hard he tried, we didn’t click – that wasn’t his fault, it’s just the way it goes in track and field sometimes.

  I guess one of the key things a lot of people don’t understand about athletics is that the relationship between a trainer and his athlete is as big as the one between a football manager and his team. And just as someone like Sir Alex Ferguson learns his players and their moods, an athletics coach has to build an understanding with every individual in the training camp. Some sprinters might respond to training hard, others can only train easy, but it’s no good trying to push both groups through the same programme. The athletes who can’t train tough are going to burn out quickly; they break down faster than a physically sturdier athlete, and that’s exactly what had happened to me. Mr Coleman hadn’t analysed how I was as a sprinter. He didn’t know what made me tick. He pushed me through the same programme as his other athletes and it had hurt bad.

&
nbsp; That’s where the great coaches stood apart. They knew how to be a friend and a mentor to their athletes, as well as a guide. They listened. They led their athletes through all sorts of tricky situations on and off the track, like injuries, personal issues and stress. In my mind, Coach Mills was one of those guys. During the Olympics I had watched him closely as he trained his sprinters. I could see that he was always working to an athlete’s individual needs and personality, which was exactly the working relationship I’d wanted.

  I also realised that because Coach Coleman’s programme had worked for him so often in the past, he wasn’t going to change it no matter how much I talked to him about the pain in my back and hamstrings. The results, in Athens, had been disastrous. After thinking on the matter, I spoke to Mr Peart about my leaving Coach Coleman. It was a tricky situation, but I hadn’t hired him, and it wasn’t my job to break the news, so I don’t know how he took it – I never asked. But whenever I saw him at the High Performance Centre afterwards the atmosphere was a little icy. Shortly afterwards, Coach Mills agreed to come onboard.

  Talk about a change of scene! Almost immediately my game changed. Coach came around to the house in Kingston to find out a bit more about my mentality and focus. He wanted to know how I’d worked in high school and what the story was with my previous training programme. Immediately there was dialogue and I liked his style. He was friendly, smart and open. Coach listened, and when we spoke, he explained everything to me in his slow, drawn-out way of conversing; he used unusual phrases to get his point across. For example, my brain was called ‘headquarters’ (‘You’ve got to get what I’m saying into headquarters, Bolt’), and it was clear there was a master plan for my career. Coach Mills wanted me to understand every last word.