Wow, I had thought he was 35+ years old.
Someone said it best, “Everyone loses the race to Father Time.”
Hope he goes out with grace.
Bolt doesn’t owe the sport anything and nor does he have anything to prove.
This race doesn’t dim his reputation one jot, just as Gatlin winning will not suddenly rescue his. He’s a double dope cheat who should have been chucked out of the sport like all other double dope cheats. I’m glad he was booed and that all the glory went to Bolt.
My pithy reply as to why this poor result; his intake of protein powder has fallen.
It is a shame that every successful athlete gets tainted with such accusations and I’d to think it of Bolt, but to the best of my knowledge there hasn’t been any whispers of it. He was a freak of nature from boyhood to adult.
Man, first Michael Phelps loses to a fake shark, and now this.
+1
His first 20m usually reminded me of a baby giraffe learning to walk.
The next 50 were usually a sublime demonstration of power and technical precision.
The last 30 were usually showboating, as befitting an athlete of his caliber.
Will miss him.
I like it, I suspect his internal monologue for the three phases are
“oh, If I must”
“there, that’s how you do it”
“which way is the camera?”
Leaving aside my incredible distaste for Justin Gatlin, I was most disappointed that Degrasse was injured. With the times posted, I think he would’ve taken it…he’s been on fire this year.
My hope is that Bolt gets bored and takes a crack at the 400 for the next olympics. His legacy is secured and it was his original distance so no matter how he does, it would be a cool bookend.
Nope. 100/200 guys don’t have the endurance to move up to the 400.
Going from the other end, Michael Johnson’s best 100 was only 10.07.
What’s the hurry?
Why is the suggestion that Bolt uses/used a common training supplement some sort of accusation?
“I suspect Bolt’s training regime slowed down in the last year.”
“Why must you accuse him of such transgressions?!”
Michael Johnson, who correctly predicted that Bolt would break his 200m record at Beijing, has also said that the 400 are a totally different ballgame. While nothing is a priori impossible for an exceptional talent like (young) Bolt, it would have required changing his training plan to the point of basically starting new.
I personally would have liked to see him take up the long jump after Berlin or so. Mike Powell said that Bolt would be the guy to break 9 meters if he wanted to.
Apologies, I saw quotation marks around “protein powder” that didn’t exist. I thought you were using that as a euphemism.
I saw this on ESPN in the middle of the night. He lost by a few hundredths of a second, virtually tied with second place, and the winner got a great jump out of the blocks while Bolt was a tad slow coming out. It’s not too surprising since he announced this as his final race (abroad?) so he maybe he wasn’t in the best state of mind. It’s an interesting footnote, but barely losing the race like that is a much better ending than keeping at it and losing many more times by wider margins until he finally hangs up his cleats.