Faster than Lightning

by Usain Bolt

  ‘Bolt, the talent you have is big,’ he said. ‘But we have to work slowly, so you can be ready in three years’ time …’

  That was the first of a few shocks to come.

  ‘Yo, hold up, Coach. Three years?’ I said. ‘That takes me up to 2007, 2008! What are you talking about?’

  I felt impatient, I wanted to get working. I’d already messed up one Olympics through injury, not to mention a World Champs through illness. I needed to get back into the action straightaway. But Coach was adamant, and he explained we had to be patient so I could be perfectly prepared for the next Olympic season. If we rushed his programme, or cut any corners, I might fall back again through a serious muscle strain.

  Coach’s hunch was that my body had broken down because I’d been pushing it too hard. The scoliosis was a challenge we could overcome, but the hamstring tears and other niggling injuries still troubled him. That’s when the man stepped up. He promised to take care of my situation and gathered together the medical notes from Doctor Müller-Wohlfahrt. Coach told me that the diagnosis was just the beginning. He was eager to find the solution too, and he promised to research every report written on scoliosis. Before we got back to training a few weeks later, he even consulted different experts for their advice on the best forms of treatment. He learned about various physiotherapy methods that might strengthen my spine. The man worked hard.

  ‘You’re going to have to live with this condition, Bolt,’ he told me after his exhaustive project had been completed. ‘The muscles in your back and abs are weak, and that affects your hip. When you run with the curvature in your spine, the hip pulls on the hamstrings, causing them to strain or tear. But if we strengthen your back and abdominal muscles with exercise, they should help you to withstand any disfunction.’

  I was getting used to doing gym work as a sprinter. Part of my training with Coach Coleman had involved weights to strengthen the core muscles – the lower back, the abs, the hamstrings, plus the quads. My calves and ankle joints were worked on, too. Those were seriously important tools in my search for explosive power during a 200 metre race. Coach Mills told me that my gym work would remain a vital part of our training programme, but he’d also devised an additional programme that focused on my back and abs. He realised I would have to complete a ridiculous amount of exercises every day for at least an hour if I was to stay fit enough to win championship races.

  Sit-ups, different core exercises, stretches. Man, when I first saw his programme written down on a piece of paper, I felt dizzy. It looked intense. I could tell each one was designed to increase the power in my core strength, and muscles were being built so they could support the spine, but I still grumbled. Straightaway I hated the extra work. The exercises were done at home and because Coach knew I had a reputation for being a little lazy, he started monitoring my progress close up. Every night he would watch as I stretched and strained. Most times it pissed me off. I was already tired from training at the track, desperate to crash out or play video games, but Coach ensured I followed every move on his damn plan.

  That wasn’t all, though. I made more visits to The Doc and received injections to relieve the pressure on my back. Closer to home, we brought in a masseur who worked on me before and after every race and every training session. I moved over to Coach’s club, the Racers Track Club, at the University of the West Indies, just outside Kingston. Before any running took place, my back and core muscles were manipulated and stretched on a massage table during a physiotherapy workout. My legs were pulled; my hamstrings, glutes and calves were flexed. Every muscle was warmed to stop them from popping under pressure.

  It was a whole new life for me, but Coach walked with me every step of the way. Because he understood my personality, he knew I needed love and communication. Whenever I felt stressed, whenever I looked down about my injuries, he would talk the problem through with me. There were times when I appeared vexed on the track. I’d go quiet. The following morning Coach would come around to the house for a chat.

  ‘Bolt, what’s wrong?’ he’d ask.

  I’d shrug my shoulders at first. ‘Nuttin’, Coach.’

  ‘Come on, Usain, what’s going on?’

  After some pushing, I’d always explain the situation, whether it was about the training, or a nagging pain, or how I was so tired, and he would always deliver a sensible answer, usually while laying down the winning hand in a game of dominoes. Often his answers involved me having to work harder – a lot harder.

  I guess at times he was like a parent. Sometimes a dad has to get a point across to his son. He says the same thing over and over to ram a situation home, and when it starts, the kid often thinks, ‘Oh God, shut up now.’ Well, Coach was that dad, I was that kid. As a young man I still didn’t understand the talent I had because I couldn’t see it from a distance, even though I’d broken junior world records and competed at the Olympics. But Coach had the clarity. He knew I needed to put in so much more if I wanted to step up.

  He encouraged me to embrace training; he wanted me to find a hunger for success in our first year together. Every time he heard I’d been out partying in Kingston, he outlined why it was so important for me to work harder. It must have been frustrating for him to see me fooling around, but Coach never cussed or shouted. We never argued. Instead he explained what he’d gone through to become a coach. He told me about the work he’d completed, or the athletes that had succeeded in his care. I always listened, because I knew he had a lot of knowledge, and we probably had more meetings than Bill Gates and Sir Richard Branson put together in those early days. Looking back, it was the beginning of a wonderful partnership.

  ***

  In 2005 I started to heat up. In June I won in both the Grand Prix meet in New York and the Jamaican Championships in Kingston; a month later I came first in the Central American and Caribbean Championships in Nassau. I even raced a 19.99 seconds 200 metres in London. My times had pushed me way up in the rankings and I was once more considered to be one of the hottest young talents on the scene. There was a sense that I was about to fulfil my potential and challenge the big names.

  The initial idea was to cruise through the 2005 season by competing in a few easy events as I worked my way to full fitness. The results were better than expected. Mentally I had changed too, and when the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki came around in August, I felt tough. It was the moment Coach first spotted a killer instinct in me. He says I became a champion with a mind of granite in the 200 metres final that year.

  As I flew across Europe to Finland, I knew I was stronger. I thought a lot about Coach’s initial work and how it had worked, both on and off the track; how from October to the summer months his training programme had toughened me up physically. My stomach looked chiselled, my legs were full of power, and veins mapped the curves of my thighs and calves. But psychologically I was stronger, too. Without the unnecessary physical stress of an intense background training programme there were no muscle strains. Without strains, there were no doubts, no questions.

  Technical changes had also been made, and Coach had shortened my running strides. Apparently I’d been over-extending my legs, which caused me to lose control, and therefore speed, as I ran. But despite my improvements, the pair of us were still finding our way. At that time there was a delicate balance to be struck between working up my natural talent and dealing with the scoliosis. My stamina training programme had been reduced and I think the longest rep I did at the Racers Track Club was a 500 metre run. Even then I would only do one long sprint per session. As I rested on the sidelines at the training track, Coach listened to my feedback. He was like a mechanic putting his ear to the engine of a sports car. With each unusual grunt or complaint from me he would fine-tune his maintenance.

  Our tweaks had been enough to improve my performances. I was feeling pretty confident that I could medal in Helsinki, and the media had hyped me up as a contender once more, which felt pretty good. But it was agreed that, even if I didn’t medal, Finlan
d would be a chance to extend my learning curve. That was a smart move. For starters it was another new environment to compete in: the weather was seriously cold and wet, which was something I’d have to suffer as I raced more and more in northern Europe.

  When the competition started, I enjoyed a chilled cruise through the qualifying races. My body was strong, and my strides were consistent.

  Heats: first place, 20.80 seconds

  Quarter-finals: second place, 20.87 seconds

  Semi-finals: fourth place, 20.68 seconds

  My poor showing in the semi meant that when I settled down into the start position for the final, I was at a disadvantage. I had been drawn in lane one, which was a major bummer for a tall sprinter because it put more pressure on my body as I leaned into the corner.§ But I still had the belief that I might show up at a major champs for the first time.

  ‘Come on, Bolt, forget Athens,’ I thought. ‘Let’s do this!’

  But I was in for a shock because what happened next was a valuable lesson in concentration. Like Coach had said, Helsinki was a seriously cold place and that night the rain was hammering down. I was young, a relatively inexperienced sprinter from Jamaica shivering in wet kit, but my situation wasn’t helped by what happened next.

  At first, John Capel, the American sprinter alongside me, wouldn’t get to his starting position. Instead he dropped down to the track and raised his hand, which forced a pause; every time we were called to our marks, the start would be delayed. Next he lightly rested his spikes on the pressure sensors located in the blocks. The technology was designed to register a false start and each athlete had to place his foot firmly on the pads, so this held up the race. The judges told him to quit. The longer we stood in the rain, the colder I felt.

  I got upset. ‘Why do you keep doing this?’ I thought. ‘Man, why don’t you just start?’

  I didn’t know what the hell was going on. My Jamaican ass was dying in the rain and with each delay I felt a little cooler, but I had enough focus to get away with the gun and Crack! I was off and ahead of the pack as we made the turn, which was unheard of for a runner in lane one. When I came off the corner I was joined by the four Americans, Capel, Justin Gatlin, Wallace Spearmon and Tyson Gay. My legs and back felt strong, the power that had been missing in Athens was back. But when I tried to make up an extra stride, s**t suddenly got very tricky. I overstretched and pushed too hard. Something grabbed at the back of my leg, my hamstring cramped. The delay had frozen my muscles tight, and now they were popping like rubber bands.

  ‘Woah, now!’ I thought. Time to slow down.

  I gritted my teeth and jogged through the line in last place. It was a lame time of 26.27 seconds, but to hell with limping off, I wasn’t going to back down. I had to finish, and that’s when the strangest thing happened. As I came off the track, Coach looked happy; his face had broken into a huge grin.

  ‘What the hell?’ I thought. ‘Why so pleased?’

  He put an arm around my shoulder. ‘Bolt, I saw a different person out there on the track,’ he said. ‘You were running in lane one and a lot of athletes would have quit before they’d even got onto the track, but you switched into a different competitor, a different animal. You discovered the heart of a champion.’

  The fact that I’d raised my game in a major final displayed a determination that he hadn’t witnessed in me before. I’d shown a tough inner resolve, maybe one he hadn’t expected to find – I don’t know. But Coach took it as a sign, a flash of world-class potential. Even though I didn’t realise it, Helsinki was his first clue that something big might be happening to the pair of us. I thought he was just plain crazy. In my mind, there was nothing good about finishing last – ever.

  * Remember, it was an Olympic year, and in Athens only the gold medallist, Shawn Crawford, topped my time in the final with a race of 19.79 seconds. I was leading the Olympic rankings after my first race of the season.

  † To stand a chance of winning an Olympic gold medal, an athlete has to go through four races: round one, round two, the semi-finals and the final.

  ‡ You know how families are. If I hadn’t worn it, Mom would have called me and said, ‘VJ, why aren’t you wearing the chain now?’ Like I said, I was a mommy’s boy. I did what I could to keep her happy.

  § Running on the inside lane was always harder for me because of my height – I had to lean into the turn a lot more, whereas it wasn’t such a problem for shorter athletes because their low centre of gravity took them around more easily. Although everyone prefers the middle or outer lanes.

  They say all sprinters are the same. That we’re cats who chase girls, drive fast cars and play video games. We also love to sleep a lot, apparently. I’m not so sure the rule applied to everyone in the short races, but in my case that stereotype fitted pretty well, especially when it came to lazing around in bed.

  I wasn’t one for early starts, even with a mellow Kingston morning coming over the Blue Mountains – the range of forest-covered peaks that filled the city skyline. If anything was going on before midday, maybe a work call or a meeting, then forget it. If somebody wanted to take my photograph for a magazine at sunrise, to hell with that. I hated getting up, and if ever I was forced to rise early for work I rolled around like a bear with a sore head for hours afterwards.

  My lazy attitude caused Coach some serious worry throughout 2006, not that he showed it at first. If the previous season had been a balancing act between training hard and managing my back condition, then 2006 was a push for supreme fitness. And that meant pain, serious pain. Coach increased his core exercise programme, which caused more hurt in my stomach, spine and hamstrings. The track work hurt my legs and lungs, as always, but gym was the worst; it delivered an all-over, head-to-toe hurt in a new workout designed to increase the power in my sprint-making muscles, while more support for my spine was developed in the back areas. Extra strength meant extra speed on the corner of a 200 metres race, and it also gave me energy to burn in the final 30 metres.

  The schedule I could handle, but then it was decided I should work out first thing in the morning, because Coach had realised that cardiovascular training stimulated me more effectively in the early evenings; my body reacted better to gym work before noon. Now that was some seriously bad news because it needed me to get up early, say ten o’clock, and I couldn’t cope with early mornings.

  At first, as background training started, I stuck to his programme, but after a while I skipped a gym session here or there. Sometimes I didn’t put the right amount of effort in when I got to the Spartan Health Club, the training facility in New Kingston where I trained with all the Jamaican track and field stars. It became a nice place to hang out and chill with friends instead.

  In a way, I was becoming a victim of my own success. Coach’s changes had enabled me to step up in some serious meets, and I wasn’t straining muscles in training like I used to; my back pain was under control. I was also winning more and more races in ’06, even though the standard of competition had improved considerably. Rather than focusing on relatively low-key events like the previous year’s Central American and Caribbean Championships, I was challenging America’s big guns more regularly – Tyson Gay, Wallace Spearmon and Xavier Carter – in Grand Prix meets in places like New York, London, Zurich, Lausanne (where I ran a personal best of 19.88 seconds) and Ostrava. At the end of the season I came third in the IAAF World Athletics Final and finished second to Wallace at the IAAF World Cup in Athens by running 19.96 seconds.

  Those small successes should have given me the incentive to work harder, to push on, but instead I used them as a reason to slack off. I figured, ‘You know what? I’m doing good. I can get away with skipping the occasional gym session.’ Some mornings when I should have been training in Spartan, I stayed in bed instead.

  The slip-ups, when they came, gave me away. Like in March, when I was competing at a meet in the National Stadium, Kingston. That night, I was due to run in the 4x400 metres relay against my old riv
al Keith Spence, and I felt confident of putting in a good race. But as I grabbed the baton and came up on Spence at the corner, I felt the same old grab of pain in the back of my thigh. Twang! A hamstring had snagged, and I was in some serious hurt. This time, I walked off the track in Kingston. I couldn’t bear to battle through the agony as I had done in Helsinki, maybe because the stakes weren’t as high – I don’t know. Clutching the back of my leg, I hobbled away for help.

  I looked for Coach among the faces in the crowd, but as I got closer to the main stand there was a boo. Then another, and another. The noise was getting louder and louder with every step. By the time I’d reached the sidelines, everybody in the bleachers was cat-calling me. Man, they looked annoyed. Some people were even shouting, cussing, saying that I’d stopped on purpose because I knew I wasn’t going to win. Then they jeered me for limping away.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ I thought, feeling sick – seriously sick. ‘Where did this come from?’

  My world crashed in, I couldn’t believe it was happening. I’d heard of people experiencing a nightmare where they had been sitting in a packed room of angry people, everyone hurling insults at them. I was suddenly living that horror for real, but on a much bigger scale. Honestly, I had never imagined a time when a Jamaican crowd – my own people, the same people that had cheered me on so loudly when I’d won the World Junior Championships in 2002 – would boo me as I came off the Kingston track.

  Forget the pulled hamstring, this was pain on another level. I was only 19, and the criticism hit me hard. I’d always given the people of Jamaica my love whenever I raced. In Kingston, the fact that I’d genuinely injured myself made it a double whammy of crap luck, and I left the stadium in a pissed mood. The car journey home was horrible. By the time I’d got to the front door, I was thinking all kinds of garbage.