Usain Bolt seeks to regain sprinting crown as doping overshadows World Championships
Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt can further cement his legendary status if he regains the 100 metres title at the World Athletics Championships in Moscow starting on 10 August, an event already being overshadowed by recent doping revelations.
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Brand Bolt faces perhaps its biggest test at this year’s world championships. And for a man who positively revels in the on-track rivalry, the irony for the Jamaican is that the competition is off-field and chemical.
The question and intrigue of the meeting is fairly straightforward: can the 27-year-old’s bravura and brilliance dilute the toxicity and doubt brought the revelations of the past month?
Doping scandals overshadow the 2013 Moscow championships. The sprinters Tyson Gay, Asafa Powell and Sherone Simpson have all failed drug tests in the lead-up to the most important athletics event since last year’s Olympic Games in London.
Gay and Powell were supposed to be threats to Bolt’s chances of regaining the world 100 metres crown (Bolt was disqualified at Daegu, South Korea in 2011 for a false start). The upshot of their withdrawal is that Justin Gatlin – who served a four-year suspension after testing positive for a banned substance – is Bolt’s most serious threat for the gold medal.
Gatlin took bronze in the Olympic final last year as Bolt became only the second man after Carl Lewis in 1988 to defend the 100 metres.
But Gatlin owns the current bragging rights. He beat Bolt in June at the Golden Gala meeting in Rome. The 31-year-old American ran 9.94 seconds. Bolt was a fraction behind at 9.95.
So when Bolt clocked 9.85 seconds to win the 100 metres at the Anniversary Games in London two weeks ago, it was not only to please the 60,000 spectators who’d turned up to relive the glow of the Olympics a year earlier, it was also to issue a statement of intent.
He was equally quick to distance himself from his fallen fellow sprinters.
“I was made to inspire people and made to run,” he said. “I was given a gift and that’s what I do. I know I’m clean, so I’m just going to continue running and using my talent and that’s what I’m going to do.”
Bolt anointed himself a legend only after he defended his Beijing 200 metres title at the London Olympic games.
Modesty forbade him to preen after winning his second successive Olympic 100 metres. After all Lewis had done that.
No-one had achieved a ‘double double’. Well that was no-one before Usain St Leo Bolt.
The sheer unbridled splendour of those four individual bursts of pure speed and the unabashed celebration with his teammates after two successive 4x100 metres Olympic relay wins have transformed this extraordinary man into the embodiment of our hopes and dreams.
He laughs, he plays up for the cameras, he jokes, he smiles. How he smiles. None of the muscle-bound po-faced posturing of champions past; then he simply enters another dimension.
The South African sprinter Anaso Jobodwana once described Bolt as a “ghost" who "disappears in front of you".
It’s been assumed the Jamaican’s preternaturally gifted. But if he’s doped up, then what?
Powell and Simpson are fellow Jamaicans. Their ignominy after testing positive for the stimulant Oxilofrine at the national trials in June for the Moscow games followed the suspension of the two-time Olympic 200 metres champion Veronica-Campbell-Brown for doping in May.
But if the recent events raise a doubt over the honesty of Jamaican and other international sprinters before the Moscow championships, then the candour of Bolt sears a path for talent.
“If you’ve been following me since 2002, you would know I’ve been doing phenomenal things since I was 15,” he said. “I was the youngest person to win the world juniors. I ran the world youth record at 17. I’ve broken every record there is in every event I’ve ever done. For me, I’ve proven myself since I was 15.”
Back home in Jamaica the locals call that kind of talk ‘boastie’. But Bolt does have the statistics and, most importantly, the medals to back up his brilliance.
The sprint disciplines need the Frenchmen Jimmy Vicaut and Christophe Lemaitre to enhance their reputations as heirs to Bolt. The Jamaican Warren Weir is a legitimate challenger to Bolt in the 200 metres. The young Briton James Dasaolu too can make a claim in the 100 metres.
Bolt though, with his six Olympic gold medals, is still the sprinter to beat in Moscow. A few more world championship golds would not only mythologise the legend but also probably salvage the sport of speed.
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