Heading into the world championships, Usain Bolt stands as tall as ever. It just seems the sport around him has diminished. Matching the sheer exuberance and sell-out mass appeal of the London Olympics was always going to be a stretch, but a shocking array of no-shows and doping scandals in several of the sport’s premier events has hit athletics hard.
It has left Bolt in a prime spot to add more gold to his gloried career. Of the athletes traveling to the Russian capital for next week’s championships, he has the fastest times in both the 100 and 200 meters. And given Jamaica’s standout tradition in the 4x100 relay, he is a favorite to win another golden triple.
Both won three golds at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, three at the London Games and three more at the 2009 worlds in Berlin. And with seven world championship medals already, a triple of any color would also move him alongside American great Carl Lewis as the most medaled man in the event’s history with 10 overall.
“Right now my only focus is winning three gold medals,” Bolt said in an email exchange with the news agency. Only a year ago, Jamaican teammate Yohan Blake was challenging Bolt for Olympic supremacy in London, but came up with silver. This year was supposed to give him another shot, but the sprinter who won the world title in Daegu, South Korea, two years ago after Bolt false-started is out with a hamstring injury.
In Blake’s absence, a revitalized Tyson Gay was to challenge hard. Yet even though the American has the two top times over the 100 this year, Gay’s year, and perhaps his career, came crashing down when he relinquished his US sprint spots for Moscow after failing an out-of-competition doping test. Bolt set the world record of 19.19 seconds at the 2009 worlds, but still feels improvements can be made. “The 200 world record would be the one I’d really love to break again, to see if it’s maybe even possible to get it under 19 seconds,” Bolt said. And when Bolt sets himself a challenge, he all too often turns it into reality.