by Usain Bolt
‘But I’ve been running so good,’ I thought. ‘Well, I thought I’d done good … When did Asafa beat me to an Olympic medal?’
That day, I’d forgotten my own rule (Do this for yourself first, Jamaica second), I got sidetracked and it very nearly cost me first place.
This time, at the trials, I was ready for Asafa’s hype and as I warmed up with Blake, I gave him a friendly warning.
‘Yo, listen, when you go out there, do not be freaked out by the love they have for Asafa here,’ I said. ‘This is his country. Remember that. No matter what happens, we’re just guests. No matter how bad Asafa runs, people always love him, so do not be tricked into thinking that these people are your fans.’
I was right, too. When we lined up at the start, the three of us were placed shoulder to shoulder; Asafa was in the middle. The announcer called my name and a cheer rolled around the bleachers. It was loud, but not crazy loud. Then Asafa was mentioned and the whole place erupted, louder than anything that had gone before. Blake leant back and caught my eye. The reality of Asafa’s popularity had hit him and we both smiled. It was a lesson learned.
All the mental focus in the world couldn’t have saved me from my bad form, though. As the athletes were called to their marks, Nesta Carter was on my inside.
Get set …
The gun went Pop! and he jumped a little on the line, rocking back before bursting forwards down field. That one movement was enough to unsettle me, and I was left dead last in the blocks. Even worse, my start was just as bad as the previous rounds. I had nothing in the way of power and with 50 metres gone, I could tell that winning the race was going to be a struggle. Blake had taken a strong lead.
‘F**k, I’m not gonna catch Blake. I’m not gonna catch Blake …’
I’d watched the kid become a powerful top-end runner over the past two years at Racers. He always came good during the last 30 metres of the 100 and 200, just like I did. If I ever let him get too far ahead at the gun in training, it was often difficult to catch him on the line. With 60 metres gone, I knew first place was out of sight; he had three, four metres on me and I would have struggled to make that up on a good day. But Asafa was another matter.
I’m not going to let Asafa beat me!
I pushed hard, straining every muscle in the last 20 metres to finish ahead of Asafa and take second place. When I looked to the clock, Blake had recorded his fastest ever time – 9.75 seconds – and the boy was hyped; it was the quickest race of the year so far. I realised then that my relaxed attitude to training had nearly cost me a place at London 2012. I was pissed.
‘I need to shape up and get my s**t together,’ I thought, as I drove home that evening. ‘There’s no way I’m gonna let Blake have the 200 as well. That’s my event.’
The following day, when the final arrived, I ran the corner hard, so hard, but still it wasn’t enough. Blake pulled away on the straight and as I approached the line, my speed just smoked away. My power had depleted, and no matter how hard I pounded the lane, no matter how much I hustled, my body would not respond. I was busted weak, and the extra strength that had made me a world record breaker in New York, Beijing and Berlin was gone.
As with the previous evening, I finished second, which was enough to qualify me for London, but it wasn’t nearly enough for me personally. I sat down on the track, vexed. I was dead on my feet, my hamstrings were sore, my legs were tired; I felt drained, but I still had enough strength to send a message to one of my rivals. As I picked myself up and jogged across the track, I caught Blake and grabbed him gently around the head. To the watching world it probably looked as if I was congratulating him. People might have thought I was saying something nice and friendly, like, ‘Well done, good race. I’m pleased for you.’
But forget that: I was upset and it was my moment to set the kid straight.
‘Yo, Blake, that will never happen again,’ I said. I was laughing, being friendly, but the intent was serious. ‘Never.’
I meant it, too.
***
In the days after my two second-place finishes the Jamaican people wrote me off. They said it was Blake’s moment in the Olympic limelight; he was the world champ after all. Apparently I was finished, and the hype that had trailed me following Beijing and Berlin had gone.
That was fine by me – at least I understood why it had happened. I’d screwed up my training; I’d convinced myself that there was enough power in my engine to win trials without gritting my teeth through The Moment, and the early season strength had gone. I was aware it had been my own fault and that I would be sharper for London, but that didn’t make the sensation of finishing second to Blake any easier to swallow.
I was angry with myself for days afterwards. I had always been a serious self-critic, and whenever I messed something up, whether it was a race or a football game, I’d call myself an idiot – or worse. I was forever cussing my mistakes, and a week or so later I watched a replay of the Jamaican trials at home. Really, I should have known better, but I couldn’t stop myself from picking at the wounds of defeat. I had to relive what had happened, to see the pain, to give myself another payload of whoop-ass.
I slumped on my sofa and watched the poor start in the 100 metres, with Nesta rocking back in the blocks. I caught the strain on my face as I tried to take Blake in the final 30 metres of the 200. It was horrible. But then, something happened, something that would start a fire in me. On the TV, Blake was crossing the line and running to the crowd. I hadn’t seen it happen on the night because I’d fallen to the track, drained, but what I missed gave me such a fury: the kid was running to the stands and celebrating in front of the bleachers. A finger was pressed to his lips.
Ssshhhhh!
It seemed to me like he was telling the rest of the field to keep quiet – me included.
I did a double take and replayed the clip. There it was again.
Ssshhhhh!
‘Hold up … what?!’ I thought. ‘Seriously? Oh come on, man, what’s going on here?’
I watched it again. And again. I couldn’t believe what I’d seen. I hadn’t been happy at losing to Blake anyway, but now there was some boastfulness in play and I became a little mad because in the two years in which he’d been competing at the top level, I’d given him nothing but support. When he first started training with us over at the Racers’ track, I had talked him up. In interviews I made a point of saying to journalists, ‘Hey, you want to look out for this kid. He’s going to be something special.’
Most of all, I considered him to be a friend and a team-mate; I’d tried to teach him the sport and everything that went with it. There were little tips at meets, like when I’d warned him not to get freaked out by Asafa’s popularity before the Jamaica Olympic trials. His nickname had even come from me. I told some reporters that he was a beast in training, and the tag had stuck.
The Beast: it was a cool title.
Now The Beast had come for me.
That was fine – I figured everyone should show confidence and want to be the best; an athlete had to talk himself up a little in public, so he could prove to the other competitors that he was made of tough stuff. But to do it in a way that looked disrespectful to me? That’s what I expected from the others.
I knew that Tyson Gay didn’t like being beaten by me, but he never dismissed me publicly. Asafa Powell had said stuff to the media about me too, but that was fine because he was in a different training camp to me. Who knew what his coach was asking him to say or do?
With Blake it was different. He was in the same group as me at home. He knew how hard I’d worked for the past couple of years, but he also knew how competitive I was. Everyone did. It was common knowledge that I hated losing. I’d recently told the guys at Racers Track Club about the time I’d played golf with NJ, and they had laughed hard when I explained how pissed I’d been at losing.*
Blake knew that about me, he might have even been there when I told the story. So, if I was the sort of person to get mad over a
game of golf, a sport I hadn’t considered to have been my thing, how did he think I was going to react when I’d been beaten by him at the 200 – my event? I wasn’t exactly delighted. He also should have known that talking about me, or making out that I might be beatable, was like a red rag to a bull. It gave me a challenge. And once I had a challenge, like my first school race, like Keith Spence, like Tyson, I always stepped up.
Once I’d seen the replay of the race, a mood came down and I didn’t really talk to Blake at the track for a couple of days. I guess I was a little off, though I lightened up soon afterwards. I even congratulated him for his performance one evening. I knew that my thinking had to be one of acceptance, that we were friends in training, enemies in competition.
Thinking about it, I should have thanked him, because that one gesture had got my engine running. In an instant, I was psyched, revved up. Every step I made on the track after that evening on the sofa came from a place of pride, because I was training for Blake as well as the defence of my Olympic titles. I wanted to show up in London and prove to him and the world that I was a champion.
I didn’t let on to the kid about how I was feeling, I didn’t want him to sense my disappointment, but inside I knew it was time to go, and go hard. There was a score to be settled.
***
London 2012: talk about crazy.
From the minute I arrived in the English capital, the hype was big. A party vibe had taken over the entire city, and the streets were full of flags and colour. Everywhere I turned there were billboards and posters hyping up the Games, and my face was on nearly all of them. A graffiti artist had even sprayed a picture of me on the side of a building in the East End of the city – it looked pretty cool.
The disappointing thing for me was, I was seeing all this stuff second-hand on the internet because there was no way I could walk around the streets to catch the sights. Unlike Beijing, there wasn’t a moment of calm before the storm, and from the minute I landed, the Olympic Village became my home, where I had to stay out of view, away from autograph hunters and fans. That was tough. There was a shopping mall by the Olympic Park, and my friends were always calling up to say how ram-packed it had been with pretty girls.
I didn’t need the distractions, though. It had taken four years for me to get to a point in my life where I could go bigger than any other athlete. After Beijing, so many people had called me an icon, a sporting phenomenon for the generation, like Muhammad Ali, Pele and Jesse Owens before me. But I hadn’t seen it that way. I thought of myself as being like every other Olympic champion, and there were plenty of those athletes around. Yeah, I’d won three gold medals last time, and that was pretty impressive by anyone’s standards, but to set myself apart I’d have to do it twice. If I could repeat my achievements in London, then it would be huge.
Truth was, I was 25 years of age and I figured London to be my best shot at achieving legend status. Rio was another four years away, and a lot could happen in that time. I would be 29 in 2016, and while it is still possible to win three gold medals, it would be a much tougher ask. So I was serious, focused as hell. I told my friends, ‘Yo, forget talking to me about the girls, I’ve got work to do.’
The big gossip on the media’s mind was just as one-tracked. British journalists could be pretty wild, and there was a newspaper story that 150,000 condoms had been distributed to the Olympic Village. Apparently every athlete in the games had been given 15 to help them through the event – not that I saw any. Then a goalkeeper from the American women’s football team heaped gasoline on the fire by telling reporters that she’d seen couples getting wild on the grass verges in the athletes’ housing area.
It all sounded pretty insane to the outside world, like some crazy orgy was going on behind closed doors, but I didn’t see any of the action in the first week or so. None of the Jamaican team did (or so they told me), but that didn’t stop the gossiping. I guess it came from the much-discussed myth about Olympic athletes: that we’re all over each other from the minute our planes touch down in an Olympic city. The thinking goes that because we’re physically primed and our testosterone levels are through the roof, we’re unable to control our urges.
Maybe that’s how it worked for the guys who medalled on the first day, the dudes in archery or shooting who finished their work early, but for track and field competitors the action wasn’t set to start until the second week of the Games, and after that we competed pretty much every day. Fooling around with the opposite sex was the last thing on my mind, at least until my races had finished.
That didn’t stop the talking, though, and shortly after arriving in London I went to a press conference with Asafa. An interviewer asked us about the contraception story. We both looked at one another and laughed. Neither of us knew what the hell he was talking about.
‘I’ve never seen a condom in an Olympic village,’ I said. ‘Straight up. Never.’
I was confused. As we rode back to the Jamaican house in an official car, Asafa and me tried to work out where the story had come from.
‘Where are they giving out these things?’ I said.
Asafa shrugged.
‘Who gets them, though? They’re not giving them to us. Maybe they give them to the federation and the federation doesn’t want to encourage any of the athletes by handing them out?’
That wasn’t to say we lived like monks. Once the days had ticked down, I saw a few Jamaican athletes enjoying themselves. Their events had been wrapped up, so they were entitled to hit London at night for a party. Whenever I saw them the following morning, they always looked rough-assed. They were messed up, and their eyes were bloodshot. At first I’d laugh at them. Then I’d think, ‘Oh man, I’ve got the 100 to do, the 200, the 4x100 … I’ll never get to play. I gotta go to work.’
The work was fun, though. The weather was cool, the stadium looked wonderful, and as soon as I stepped on to the track for the first heat of the 100 metres, everyone in the stands went mad. It gave me chills. The further I walked out into the track, the louder the noise got, and the louder it got, the better it was for me. I felt more pumped with every step.
The Olympic Stadium was even overflowing on the first morning of heats and the London crowds were there from the minute the gates opened for business. Everyone in the nation had gone wild for the event. The atmosphere was huge and I’d never felt an energy like it before – not even at Athens or Beijing. I looked around, taking it all in, thinking, ‘Why are there so many people here?’ Usually morning sessions were half empty at best, even for a major champs. There was always one stacked section, while the rest of the arena stood empty.
The Olympic Stadium in London was different. It heaved with fans and there were plenty of Jamaicans in town. London had always been popular with Caribbean people and a lot of them had come to the arena for a party. There was plenty of cheering for our athletes, which only added to my energy, but it brought a lot of pressure, too. Because of Jamaica’s Olympic success in 2008, people had been talking us up as favourites in the sprint events. There was some serious expectation all of a sudden, and the Jamaican people demanded a repeat of the gold medals won in Beijing by myself, Shelly-Ann Fraser (women’s 100 metres), Melaine Walker (women’s 400 metre hurdles) and Veronica Campbell-Brown (women’s 200 metres), not to mention the 4x100 metre men’s relay team.
The hype was big all over, though, and everybody wanted to know why our small island in the Caribbean had produced so many top-class sprinters. In newspaper articles and TV documentaries, a whole range of theories got bounced around. Some people, including Pops, claimed that it was our yams – the starchy vegetable that made up part of the traditional Jamaican diet. Others put it down to the fact that Jamaican sprinters often started out by training on grass tracks, like I had at school. The surface improved our technique and there was a feeling that an athlete who could run fast on turf could run fast anywhere.
Michael Johnson had made a TV documentary in which he suggested that our success, and the su
ccess of a number of US athletes, may have come about because we were descendants of West African slaves. Apparently, back in the day, those guys had suffered a rigorous selection process before being transported to America and the Caribbean. Only the strongest were picked for the journey and, of those, only the toughest made it to Jamaica, the furthest point on the slave trail. The voyage was so damn tough that it killed a lot of them.
Johnson believed that the ‘slave gene’ had been passed down to track and field stars like himself – plus me, Blake and the others – which was what gave us such a physical advantage over our rivals. We were naturally stronger, fitter and faster. But I had another theory. I believed that the main reason why Jamaica had produced so many elite sprinters was because of one thing only: Champs.
At that time, Jamaicans viewed track and field in the same way that Brazilians viewed football – they were psyched about it. Everywhere in Brazil, kids kicked balls around: in the streets, on the grass, even at the beach, where they’d made sandy football pitches on the Copacabana and played under floodlights. It was only natural that they should produce a lot of serious players like Neymar, Ronaldo and Ronaldinho. In Jamaica, though, every young person was focused on track and field, and Champs had become the pinnacle for any junior athlete with ambition.
It wasn’t just the kids from Kingston and the larger towns that were making it big in the sport. There were athletes from deep rural areas showing up too, just like I’d done at the 2001 meet, and I was hearing from Coach that the national trainers had been spoilt for choice at recent events. They had turned up at the National Stadium in Kingston and picked the best talent on display like they were thoroughbred racehorses.
