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Sunday, August 5, 2012

LONDON 2012 TRACK AND FIELD: Olympic 100m final: Can Usain Bolt make history?

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • Usain Bolt could make history during this weekend's 100m final
  • He'd match Carl Lewis' record of back-to-back 100m titles
  • But he has friend Yohan Blake hot on his heels
  • Could either one of them break the 9.4s barrier?
It is the question that has followed Usain Bolt for the past four years, the answer to which will not truly be known until the final for the men's 100 meters sprint in London has been done and dusted.
Just how fast could he have run on that night in Beijing?
It seems a crazy thing to ask. After all, the Jamaican smashed the world record with a time of 9.69 seconds, winning gold and saving the Olympics' marquee sport from itself after successive drug scandals.
And he has run faster since, setting a new record a year later at the World Championships with a time of 9.58 seconds.
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Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt will begin his quest to make history by becoming the first man since Carl Lewis to defend the men's 100 meter title. Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt will begin his quest to make history by becoming the first man since Carl Lewis to defend the men's 100 meter title.
Bolt out of the blue
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The 100 meter final at the 1988 Seoul Olympics remains one of the most infamous and fascinating moments in the games' history. The race was won in a world record time by Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson. But he was to be stripped of his medal and record under the shadow of drug use. The 100 meter final at the 1988 Seoul Olympics remains one of the most infamous and fascinating moments in the games' history. The race was won in a world record time by Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson. But he was to be stripped of his medal and record under the shadow of drug use.
Race for the prize
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The story of 100 meters final at the 1988 Olympics The story of 100 meters final at the 1988 Olympics
But Beijing was much more than a world record. It was the manner of his victory that catapulted him into the kind of international fame not seen in track and field since the U.S. Olympic legend Carl Lewis.
Not only did he blow the rest of the field away, he cantered across the line with 20 meters to go, chest turned to the cameras, arms wide open.
A new hero
Other athletes past and present, not to mention the International Olympic Committee president, derided his showmanship. But the public had made their mind up. They had a new hero.
"My one aim was just to be a champion. That is what I came here to do," Bolt, then 21, said after the race.
"I told you I was going to be number one and I did just that ... It was crazy, phenomenal."
Ever since he has rightly been heralded as the greatest sprinter of all time. But the celebration and the criticism left that one question hanging in the air. Just how fast could he have run? The press, coaches and fellow athletes all speculated. The trainer credited with Bolt's rise, Glen Mills, suggested that he could have run under 9.6 seconds.
Academia even got involved. The University of Oslo's Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, which deemed the issue of such importance that it dedicated some of the finest minds on the planet to the quandary, predicted that he would have run 9.55 seconds.
Now all the talk is of this Sunday's 100m final at London 2012.
Is 9.4 possible?
Bolt could become the first sprinter since Carl Lewis to defend an Olympic 100m title. But no one is talking about 9.69, 9.58 or 9.55. Now Bolt is looking at breaking the record again and seeing if the human body can be pushed further, through the 9.4 second barrier.
Usain Bolt strikes his trademark pose after claiming gold in the 100 meters at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Usain Bolt strikes his trademark pose after claiming gold in the 100 meters at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Bolt's bow and arrow
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Gold running: Jamaican sprinters on top Gold running: Jamaican sprinters on top
American sprinter Tyson Gay says he's in his prime and fit and ready for the London Olympics. American sprinter Tyson Gay says he's in his prime and fit and ready for the London Olympics.
Going for gold
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Human to Hero: Tyson Gay Human to Hero: Tyson Gay
Jamaican sprinter Veronica Campbell-Brown is seeking to make history by aiming to win a third consecutive 200 meters gold medal at the London 2012 Olympics. Jamaican sprinter Veronica Campbell-Brown is seeking to make history by aiming to win a third consecutive 200 meters gold medal at the London 2012 Olympics.
The fastest woman on earth?
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The fastest woman on earth? The fastest woman on earth?
Human to Hero: Sprinter Yohan Blake
"Everyone has been talking about 9.4 all season," Bolt explained in an interview with CNN in July, when asked whether he could run that time at London 2012.
"If it's possible I am the one."
One study by Dutch mathematicians at Tilburg University concluded that, theoretically, Bolt's dream could be realized.
"According to our results this is achievable," the co-author of the report Sander Smeets said in an interview with AFP.
"The absolute limit for a world record at the moment is 9.36 seconds," he added.
The theory, along with Bolt's rhetoric, sounds fine.
But the reality is that Bolt comes into the Olympics having struggled with injuries this season and seen a genuine threat to his title emerge in the shape of training partner Yohan Blake.
"He [Bolt] has had some problems this year," 200m Olympic champion Michael Johnson told CNN's Piers Morgan this month.
"But he can still run two tenths (of a second) quicker than anyone else... he doesn't need to be 100 per cent."
Winning would be enough of an achievement, one that would bookend and incredible four years since his record run in Beijing. That run transformed Usain Bolt's life.
He is now mobbed wherever he goes, adorns billboards from Tokyo to Mexico City and has written his first autobiography. As former Olympic gold medalist Linford Christie remarked during a recent interview with Bolt for CNN, the Jamaican is the most famous athlete, not just in the world, but of all time.
Where it began
Bolt's journey began, like many other world record sprinters, in the Jamaican district of Trelawny where other greats such as current Olympic women's 200m champion Veronica Campbell-Brown also have roots. Although he was Canadian, Ben Johnson was also born here.
It is an area famed for breeding sprint stars thanks largely to a fiercely contested four-day race championships where crowds of up to 30,000 fill the national stadium in Kingston. Over a million people watch the young sprint hopefuls live on TV for what is often the springboard towards the Olympics.
"I feel we push our young athletes," Bolt told CNN when asked why Jamaica produces so much sprinting talent earlier this year.
"There is this thing called the Boys and Girls Championships in Jamaica, which showcases the talent. The level of competition is really high because it pushes you every day to be the best in your event, in your class."
Bolt came on to the sprint world's radar at the 2003 Boys and Girls Championship when, at just 16, he posted times in the 200 and 400m good enough for the Olympic finals in Sydney three years earlier.
Going pro
He went pro a year later but his failure in the 200m at the Athens Olympics helped him to recalibrate his life and focus on his training. Coach Mills eventually allowed Bolt to run the 100m too, a discipline seen as too difficult for a man the size of Bolt (he is six foot three inches tall) to excel in. It was a path that would take him to his coronation in Beijing, where he also won gold in the 200m and 4x100m relay in world record times.
Yet four years on and the task of becoming only the second man -- after Lewis -- to retain the 100m Olympic title has become far harder than many people thought it would be.
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Many expected Bolt to dominate the games for years to come. But the emergence of his compatriot Blake -- who beat Bolt in both the 100 and 200m at the Jamaican Olympic trials this year -- has added the one ingredient needed in any classic final: a genuine rival that could prevent him from equaling Lewis's record.
"We're training partners so we're really close," Bolt says of Blake, who won the 2011 world 100m title after his compatriot's false start in the final.
"We laugh even when we're warming up. We're cool but as soon we're getting on the track line up it's a different story."
In 1988 Lewis had his own fierce rival from Trelawny: Johnson. Lewis famously came second in the Seoul final and only became the first man to win back-to-back Olympic 100m titles by default after Johnson failed a drugs test. Lewis was handed the medal in his hotel.
A rival to Lewis
Lewis is sceptical that Bolt could match his achievement.
"Carl Lewis is totally preoccupied by Bolt and sees him not as a successor but as a rival to his legacy," says author Richard Moore, who recently wrote a book about the 1988 final called "The Dirtiest Race in History."
"When I asked him about Bolt he said, 'It will be really tough for him, no one has defended an Olympic title before.' Moore pointed out to him that he had, technically, defended his 100m title at Seoul and Lewis corrected himself: 'I said no one else BUT ME!'"
Bolt and Blake have none of the enmity that Lewis and Johnson had, but if Bolt can defend his Beijing title then it would surely stand above Lewis' achievements, simply because that second gold medal in Seoul was won in such unprecedented circumstances.
"There's no way to describe it. For me it is amazing to think that I am faster than everybody," Bolt said when asked how it feels to be the fastest man in the world.
The worry for Bolt is that Blake isn't his only rival.
U.S. sprinter Tyson Gay has run the second fastest time ever. The 2004 Olympic champion Justin Gatlin, also from the U.S., is returning after a doping ban while fellow Jamaican Asafa Powell once held the world record himself. Anyone of them could snatch gold if Bolt's injury problems are worse than his bravado suggests.
That tongue in cheek bravado might have helped make Bolt such a star; but the Jamaican is not afraid to show a more serious side when he talks about the sprint challenge ahead.
"All I can say," Bolt told CNN last month, "(is) Yo, let's go if you want a piece of me."
Four years later, under the intense pressure only an Olympic 100m final can bring, we may finally know how fast Bolt really can run.
The stage is set for for the most eagerly awaited track event at an Olympics. And no one, even given the talk of injuries, should discount that come Sunday, the world would have witnessed the fastest race in history too.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • NEW: Host nation cheers Andy Murray to tennis title
  • NEW: U.S. vault champ errs, wins silver
  • Men's 100 final highlights rest of schedule
  • Women's boxing makes it Olympics debut
London -- Three times prior, Andy Murray had played Roger Federer in an important tennis final, and three times he had failed.
On Sunday, in front of an enthusiastic home crowd, Murray turned the tables on the world's top-ranked player.
Murray cruised to the gold medal in the men's singles final, beating Federer in straight sets with a commanding performance.
"I've had a lot of tough losses in my career, this is the best way to come back from the Wimbledon final," he told a BBC interviewer. "I was a little tired after Wimbledon, but I felt fresh on the court today."
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Murray said he had expected a tough match from Federer, who just four weeks ago beat Murray for his seventh Wimbledon title on Centre Court, also the site of the Olympic final.
But after winning the first set 6-2, he broke Federer to take a 2-0 lead. He grew in confidence at that point, he said, and the rout was on.
He lost only five more games in the three-set match against the man who has won three of his 17 Grand Slam titles by beating Murray.
Also on Sunday, at the North Greenwich Arena where the gymnastics competition is being held, there was a stunning result in the women's vault.
After her first attempt, world champion McKayla Maroney looked like a sure gold medal winner. But her second vault turned into heartbreak as she did something she rarely does.
She came up short on her landing and fell.
"I'm really disappointed with myself," she said. "I fell on the second vault, and I don't think I've ever even fallen in warmup here at all. It's a big shock, and it's really sad."
Maroney, who had nailed her first effort and scored 15.866, received only a 14.300 on her second.
"I was praying there was still a chance, but I didn't make my vault,' she said, "and a gold medal vaulter doesn't deserve to fall."
She tried to look on the bright side.
"All I can look forward to is the next competition coming up, and I just have to accept that I have a silver medal and that's not too bad," she said.
Romania's Sandra Izbasa won the gold with a two-vault average of 15.191.
Olympics fans will revel in track and field's most anticipated event Sunday, and the men's 100 meters will not lack for drama as Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt defends his title against his countryman.
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Bolt became a household name with his gold medal win in the 2008 Beijing Games. His Jamaican compatriot, Yohan Blake, is proving to be his main competition as they face off Sunday. Americans Tyson Gay, Justin Gatlin and Ryan Bailey will also be in the men's 100 semifinals -- followed an hour later by the final.
"We are keeping a good chemistry," Blake said Saturday of Bolt, his training partner. "We are joking in training, having fun. On race day, it's business. But outside, we are still friends."
Hours before the two stars raced, the women's marathon kicked off under a heavy downpour as the runners snaked around wet London streets. Tiki Gelana of Ethiopia won the gold in 2:23.07. Priscah Jeptoo of Kenya was the silver medalist, and Tatyana Petrova Arkhipova of Russia was third.
"It was a great race. I really loved it. The rain makes it very interesting," Gelana said. "I love running in the rain, I have been doing that since I was a small child. I slipped in the middle of the race, and my elbow is still injured. But I didn't feel any pain during the race."
Noticeably absent from the race was world record holder Paula Radcliffe of Great Britain, who withdrew citing a recent injury.
Women's boxing made its Olympic debut Sunday with a round of 16 matches in each of the three weight divisions.
Sunday's events follow an action-packed Saturday that saw the host nation rake in six wins. A win in men's Finn sailing on Sunday brought its total to 15 golds.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and China lead the gold medal count with 27. China leads the total medal count with 57.
But history on Saturday also favored the U.S., as the most decorated Olympian of all time tallied another win with his American teammates in the 4x100-meter medley relay, handing Michael Phelps his 18th gold medal in the last race of his storied swimming career.
The U.S. win put an already unsurpassed Phelps at 22 total medals over four Olympic Games: 18 golds, two silvers and two bronzes. Japan placed second in Saturday's race, while Australia finished third.
In the last day of London's swimming competition, the American women won the 4x100-meter medley relay race, setting a world record with a time of 3:52.05. Australia netted silver.
Sun Yang also added to China's growing gold tally with a win in the men's 1,500-meter freestyle. Ryan Cochrane of Canada finished second, while Oussama Mellouli of Tunisia took bronze.
But on the hardwood Saturday, U.S. Olympic command seemed far less convincing.
Team USA squeaked past Lithuania in a preliminary-round basketball contest, winning by just five points after trailing by two in the waning minutes of the fourth quarter -- the first scare for the favored American squad after a series of dominating performances that had bolstered an aura of invincibility.
Elsewhere in London, Serena Williams completed a career golden slam at the 2012 Games, adding for the United States an Olympic women's singles tennis gold medal to her four tennis major titles. On Sunday, she and her sister Venus added a third women's doubles title by beating Andrea Hlavackova and Lucie Hradecka of the Czech Republic.
Also on the track, double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius, who runs on special carbon fiber blades and is nicknamed The Blade Runner, came in an impressive second in his heat of the men's individual 400-meter race, thus qualifying for Sunday's semifinals.
He is the first person to compete in the able-bodied Olympics using prosthetic legs, and he will also compete in the Paralympics later this summer.
CNN's David Ariosto and Laura Smith-Spark contributed to this report.


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