Faster than Lightning

by Usain Bolt

  First of all I questioned my ability: ‘I’m not good enough for this sport …’

  I questioned the Jamaican fans: ‘Wow, I got booed in front of my national crowd when I was giving it my best. I was actually running hard … Yo, maybe this is how it’s going to be from now on?’

  Then it got worse: ‘Three years ago I started this life. Three years I’ve been injured. Is this really working? Should I really continue? All these things that I do, no matter how hard I try, this might not be for me. This track and field thing is tough …’

  I knew I was thinking crazy, and I knew I wasn’t considering quitting, not seriously. But the next day I sat down with Coach. I told him I’d had some doubts about where my career was heading.

  ‘I don’t know what’s going on here,’ I said. ‘Why are they booing me?’

  Coach laid it down. ‘You have to learn the way Jamaicans are, Usain,’ he said. ‘You have to figure them out. Listen, if you do good, you’re going to be cheered. If you do bad, they’re going to boo you. That’s Jamaica. You also have to understand that you’re doing this thing for yourself first and no one else. The country comes second. You can’t sit down and worry about what other people think. If you don’t understand that, then none of this makes sense.’

  Coach knew all about the criticism because he was experiencing some heat of his own. The media were attacking him. They said I was squandering my talent under his care, and despite some of my successes in 2005, they claimed he wasn’t training me properly. Often, they were calling for a different coach to take me on, but they had no idea of our long-term plans or goals. Not that Coach cared. ‘Listen, if we make good results, it will be an indication to them that you and I are able to find water in a desert,’ he said.

  I went home and thought long and hard about what Coach had said and what I was going to do. I knew he was right, that I would have to ignore all the criticism. I thought, ‘You know what? To hell with the fans, I’m going to do this and I’m going to do this for myself.’ I had another mantra for the start line: Don’t think about them. Just do.

  Suddenly, track and field was about me first and the Jamaican fans second. It felt nice not to care any more.

  ***

  There was more advice, lots more. If ever I skipped the track, Coach would come around to talk. If ever I went partying, Coach would come around to talk. If ever I missed gym or looked like I was losing my edge, Coach would come around to talk. Sometimes, he just came around to talk.

  At the start of ’07, he told me to get a focus, an inspiration, something I could aim for whenever I trained, either in the gym or on the track.

  ‘You have to want something,’ he said. ‘You have to set yourself goals so you can push yourself harder. Desire is the key to success.’

  It was smart advice. When I’d first started racing professionally, I’d wanted to earn enough cash so I could give my parents stuff. Mom didn’t have a washer and she hated doing the laundry by hand, so I wanted to buy her a brand new machine. Meanwhile, Pops would always moan about money, which pissed me off. One day, when he started grumbling about the bills, I even said to him, ‘I’m going to pay you back every dime you gave me as a kid!’ I figured that if I earned enough I could even buy him a new set of wheels.

  I guess it’s easy to get wrapped up in the riches of sport – any sport. When I first went on to the pro circuit in ’04 and mixed with the other athletes, I learned about how much the top guys in Kingston were earning and it blew my mind. Like Asafa Powell, the 100 metres runner. That was the event where the prestige and the money lived. In those days athletes in the 100 were getting $16,000 for a win in the Golden League, the series of annual meets organised by the IAAF, and the top runners were paid to appear at meets, often as much as $40–50,000 a race. There were also some lucrative endorsement deals to be made if you were a champion sprinter.* But Asafa really became a global star when he broke the world record with a time of 9.77 seconds in ’05. Pow! Suddenly he was hot property and a big earner, as sports companies and drinks manufacturers wanted to sponsor him. Whenever I saw him hanging out around Kingston, or at race meets, he was always sitting in some fancy sports vehicle.

  ‘Hmm, I need some of that for myself,’ I thought.

  For me, ’04 had been a bad start. Before the Olympics, there was a lot of interest in me. I was the reigning World Juniors and World Youth champ and I had smashed all kinds of records. Fans wanted to watch me race. I was considered hot property, especially in Jamaica, and people were willing to pay me to compete, but my injuries meant that I couldn’t pick up any appearance fees or competition winnings, and in my first year I was unable to exploit my financial potential.

  Mr Peart had cut me a few deals off the track, which, looking back, were small time, but they were an indication of my commercial appeal at the time, even as a 17-year-old. I signed a sponsorship contract with a supermarket called Super Plus, and in return for fronting their stores I was given a certain amount of food every month. I then signed a modest deal with the sports company Puma which meant I received boxes of free trainers. I was pretty hyped about that. I even became an ambassador for a mobile-phone company called Digicel. I had cash in my bank account, but it wasn’t a lot at first, and when it was finished, that was it. I didn’t get huge amounts of money to burn and as soon as my pay cheque arrived, I’d go crazy and spend it all. Often I’d have to ask Mr Peart for some extra dollars to see me through to the last week of the month.

  ‘Too bad,’ he’d say whenever I explained my cash-flow issues. ‘You’ll have to save your dollars!’

  I learned some pretty big lessons in that first year. I signed with an agent called Ricky Simms, from PACE Sports Management in London. Ricky had been selected to be my agent by Mr Peart because his company worked with a number of world record holders and Olympic champions. Straightaway we clicked. Ricky was an Irish guy who worked with his partner, Marion Steininger, and chatting to them was fun, easy. Like Coach, Ricky got me: he had once been a good middle-distance runner himself, so he understood the pressures of being an athlete, as well as the financial potential of success. When he flew to Kingston to meet me, Ricky explained how the business worked and how much money I could make – if I fulfilled my potential.

  He told me that if I started running faster times, then my earnings would go up. I would get more in appearance fees and prize money for winning. If I got a gold medal here or a silver there, again my appearance money would increase. I only had to win one medal in a big championship, like the Olympics or a World Champs, for the cash to roll in from sponsors and other commercial opportunities. That would then lead to other deals, like TV adverts and public appearances. I got excited.

  ‘This is good stuff,’ I thought. ‘If I can keep fit, things might be good for me all of a sudden. I might make some money.’

  In 2004, Ricky’s lesson was clear: to get more money, to buy cars like Asafa, I had to win some of the bigger races on the circuit. But to win the big races I had to overcome the likes of Shawn Crawford and Justin Gatlin in the 200 metres, and that was easier said than done. I hardly raced in 2004 and by 2005 I just wasn’t sure how to get the edge on the top guys.

  That’s when Coach stepped up. By the middle of the ’05 season he spotted a flaw in my game that, if corrected, could push me into contention – serious contention.

  ‘Bolt, you keep looking around when you compete in meets,’ he said one afternoon at the track. ‘You don’t do it in training, but all through a race, you’re flapping your neck about, watching the other athletes. It’s costing you time. It cuts your forward momentum. If you were a horse, I’d put blinkers over your head to stop you from looking left then right as you get to the line. If you want to beat the others, just stare ahead …’

  I listened hard, and I took the advice on board. When I next raced the 200 in the Reebok Grand Prix in June, I made a point of not looking for my competitors until I’d passed the 150 metre mark. Once I had glanced around, they were out
of sight, way, way, way behind.

  ‘Oh, I see what’s happening here!’ I thought.

  That one move had been enough to improve my performances in 2005, which gave me serious earning power. I was making more and more in appearance fees and win bonuses. It wasn’t long before I had pulled enough money to buy Mom her washing machine.

  Throughout 2006 and the start of 2007, getting more cash became the focus – I wanted that car for Pops, I also dreamed of getting myself a sports vehicle for myself. At the time I drove a Honda, which I loved, but I wanted something with a bit more flair. I used that dream to push me through the pain of training, though I seemed to be more much focused on my future than some of the other guys working out of Spartan or Racers Track Club. I noticed that a lot of the athletes in Jamaica were satisfied with the small amounts they were making. Whenever we conversed, they said, ‘OK, I’ve won a few races, I’m good with what I’ve got.’ But I most definitely was not like that. I wanted to make the most of what I had as a pro. I wanted to maximise my potential and make some serious money. Every time I saw Ricky I would ask the same question: ‘Yo, explain to me how so-and-so gets so much?’

  I reminded myself of my new focus every day. If there were times when I felt like slacking off, I said to myself, ‘What more do I want? What’s the thing I want the most?’ In my mind I pictured the car, the clothes, whatever it was I hoped to get, and I’d motivate myself. Step up, Bolt! Get training if you want to get it!

  It was still hard, though. There were sessions when Coach would tell me to run more and more 300-metre sprints, even though I had been pounding the lanes all evening. My whole body was dead, I couldn’t get myself up off the track, and the more I moved, the more I burned and ached. All my muscles screamed, ‘Nah! I don’t want to do this!’ And that’s when I had to dig seriously deep to find my motivation.

  Thankfully, Coach had taught me a way of embracing the pain. He called that overwhelming rush of hurt ‘The Moment of No Return’, a point of pure agony when the body told an athlete to quit, to rest, because the pain was so damn tough. It was a tipping point. He reckoned that if an athlete dropped in The Moment, then all the pain that went before it was pointless, the muscles wouldn’t increase their current strength. But if he could work through the pinch and run another two reps, maybe three, then the body would physically improve in that time, and that was when an athlete grew stronger.

  I also learned how to run through any twinges or unusual flashes of hurt. Coach told me to run when my body suffered an unexpected rush of agony, like a burning nerve in my shoulder or a grinding around my kneecap. In those seconds of confusion I had to push on. By experiencing new sensations I would come to understand my body’s capacity to succeed in times of stress. Coach’s theory was pretty clear.

  ‘You never know, Bolt,’ he said. ‘You might feel a pain in the final of the Olympics and if you haven’t come to understand it in training, you might stop when the sensation is only temporary rather than debilitating. If you stop you’ll have lost your chance of an Olympic gold medal, maybe for ever. But if you’ve learned to run through the pain previously, you’ll understand it. That means you’ll always have a chance of glory.’

  With every flash of hurt, I kept on running. With every training session The Moment of No Return became a painfully familiar sensation.

  ***

  It’s funny how one race can change everything. In August 2007, when the World Championships in Osaka, Japan came around, I was strong, really strong. I’d burned through The Moment in training so many times that it damn well nearly killed me, and Coach’s back and core exercises were done through gritted teeth. Every. Single. Day. But the gym was another story. I went in spells and I hated it. Sometimes, when I did turn up, I’d only go through the motions.

  The track work paid off, though. I’d moved up in the pro rankings after some good times during the early season. In June I took second place in the Reebok Grand Prix in New York. I could feel my technique improving with every meet and my personal bests were getting quicker. I figured that I could handle coming second or third in an event if it gave me a new personal best. As long as I was running faster and faster, I was pretty happy.

  In July, I came second in Athletissima, the Super Grand Prix meet at the Stade Olympique in Lausanne in Switzerland, and first in London during the Norwich Union Grand Prix. I was certainly a big contender by the time Osaka came around, but I wasn’t the number one favourite because Tyson Gay was running hot, seriously hot. He had won the US trials with a 19.62 race, and everybody thought he had it nailed. That feeling was only strengthened before the 200 metres event got under way because he had defeated Asafa in the 100 metres final, which was a real shock to me, firstly because Asafa was the world record holder and the man and, secondly, because Tyson’s win suggested he was now a serious contender for the Olympics in Beijing the following year.

  Still, I was feeling pretty good. Coach seemed hyped too, but as we prepared for the heats, he reminded me of my injury in Helsinki. He wanted me to relax in my early races.

  ‘Don’t push too hard, Bolt,’ he kept saying. ‘Don’t go out there and overdo it.’

  He explained that I had to finish in the top two in the semi-finals in order to get a good lane for the final – one on the outside, rather than near to the curve. Once I’d secured my finishing position in each race, I could cruise. Coach didn’t want me to overstretch myself and strain another hamstring.

  Bang! I took the first heat easy, chilling all the way to the line without any stress. One kid nearly broke his neck trying to beat me to first place, but there was enough in my tank to take second without needing to get into top gear. I won the second round and semi-final without exerting too much effort, beating Wallace in both heats. That result got me into lane five for the final, between Tyson and Wallace. It was business time.

  As we lined up in the Nagai Stadium, I had one mindset: ‘Yo, I can do this!’ I was super-confident and the only real stress was my start. I knew a bad reaction at the gun would kill me against Tyson, because he was a strong competitor and one slip from me and he would finish off my challenge in a heartbeat, especially in a race as big as the World Championships final. When the stakes were high, the guy was ruthless. Tyson would have happily broken his own foot to get a gold medal.

  Looking back, I don’t think he really imagined that I could beat him on the night of the final, not for one instant. In his mind Wallace was probably his biggest threat in the 200 metres. I guess the main clue that Tyson wasn’t worrying over me too much was the way in which we were still cool on the start line. Before races we’d speak, he’d say said hello whenever we passed, and he always laughed along whenever I made jokes. The truth was that Tyson never, ever conversed with guys he believed to be a challenge to his status.

  That’s how he rolled. Anyone who watched track and field knew that Tyson was an intense guy. He stared down the lane before races like he wanted to kill the track; like he hated the track. He was wired, wound up tight, and that was his way of preparing. He wasn’t one for playing in front of the cameras. He didn’t fool around with the other guys in the call room, the area where the athletes gathered before races. So Tyson was easy to read in that way. In his mind, I wasn’t a threat, that’s why he was nice to me. But damn, I badly wanted to be his biggest problem.

  Pop! The gun went and as I came out of the blocks I could tell that my start had been strong as I’d pulled up on Wallace after 50 metres. I glanced across. I couldn’t see Tyson, but I knew he was just behind me. I refocused on the lane ahead. I could hear his short, sharp breaths and the cracking of his spikes on the track. Clack! Clack! Clack! For the first 75 metres, that sharp, rapping metallic sound was right on my shoulder. It didn’t seem to be moving any closer.

  ‘Tyson’s not passing me,’ I thought. ‘He’s not passing me!’

  I should have known better. At the top of the turn Tyson flew off like a missile. He was gone, miles ahead, shooting off into the distan
ce and there was no stopping him. I could not believe it – he had taken four or five metres off me in the blink of an eye. I stared in disbelief: What the hell just happened? But in my mind I still believed I could catch him. I clenched my jaw and started pumping.

  ‘I’m gonna get there,’ I thought, as the gap closed and the line came into view. ‘I’m gonna get there!’

  But I was wrong, my body didn’t have enough zest. My engines couldn’t match Tyson’s speed.

  ‘Nah, forget first place,’ I thought. ‘You got no more than this. You can’t take him.’

  With 20 metres to go it was game over. Tyson took first place with a championship record of 19.76 seconds, but the silver was mine with a time of 19.91, ahead of Wallace, and I had my first medal in a major champs. Talk about making some big statements.

  I was able to step up in the biggest events. I was able to work hard and not pop muscles. I could win medals despite the scoliosis. And to hell with what everybody thought about me back home – I was on Tyson Gay’s tail for real.

  ***

  There were questions too, frustrations. I dropped to the track afterwards, my head spinning. I wanted to take in what had just happened because I’d left everything out there, but I could not work out how Tyson had taken me at the corner. In a split second, several metres had changed hands and I’d been left behind.

  When I got to the athletes’ village that night, everybody was psyched about my silver, and I was too, but I still stressed. What the hell? How had he beaten me? By 2 a.m., my head was going crazy, I couldn’t relax and I needed answers. I padded across the corridor to Coach’s room and knocked on his door. I’d disturbed him, his eyes were sleepy, but he knew straightaway that something was up.

  ‘Usain? What’s wrong?’

  I poured it out.

  ‘How did he do it, Coach? I mean, seriously? To be behind me and then come off the corner that way – how? I really thought I had him out there. I thought I could do it.’