The Fastest Man Alive Read online

  THE TRUE STORY OF USAIN BOLT

  USAIN BOLT WITH SHAUN CUSTIS

  EDITOR’S NOTE

  Usain Bolt shocked the world when he set a new world record in the 2008 Olympics with a time of 9.69 in the 100-meter dash. He went on to win two more gold medals in the 200-meter dash and 4x100-meter relay, both as world records. From that moment on, Usain Bolt was a household name.

  While most Olympians would see this as the pinnacle of their career, for Bolt it was only the beginning. In the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, he destroyed his world records in the 100- and 200-meter dash (9.58 in the 100 and 19.30 in the 200).

  As the 2012 Olympics in London were approaching, people started wondering if the phenomenon that was Bolt would be able to continue. He was disqualified from the 100-meter dash at the 2011 World Championships with a false start, and narrowly escaped with his life when he crashed his car in June, which was not his first accident.

  With all eyes watching, Bolt stepped up to the starting line with some stiff competition. The U.S. had three big-name competitors in Justin Gatlin, Tyson Gay, and Ryan Bailey. Richard Thompson (Trinidad and Tobago), who had won the silver in the previous Olympics, also was ready to dethrone the champ. With a bull’s-eye on his back, Bolt not only won the race, but shattered his previous Olympic record by 0.06 and beat out his fellow countryman, Yohan Blake, by an amazing 0.12 seconds.

  After such an impressive victory, Bolt followed-up the 100-meter with something that nobody had ever done before in Olympic history—he defended his 200-meter title and won gold for the second time in that event. Bolt finished in 19.32 seconds, which was just a shade off the Olympic record, and compatriots Yohan Blake and Weir Warren finished with the silver and bronze.

  Although Bolt still had a race to go, everyone could not stop talking about his incredible 100-meter dash finish, as well as his being the first Olympian to win back-to-back sprint doubles. The fact that he has been able to continually show up in big situations (and no situation is bigger than the Olympics), proves that he doesn’t just want to win races, but also to dominate his competition.

  The legend of Usain Bolt is still being written, but at this point in his career, he has not only exceeded expectations, but has blown them away. Nobody knows what the future has in store for Usain, but at this point in time, he is not only the fastest man on Earth, but has proven himself to be the epitome of excellence and a national hero for the country of Jamaica.

  –August, 2012

  Copyright © 2012 by Sports Publishing, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

  Published by arrangement with HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

  Copyright © 2010 Usain St. Leo Bolt

  The publishers undertake to register the copyright in the US Edition with the United States Copyright Office.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bolt, Usain, 1986-

  The fastest man alive : the true story of Usain Bolt/

  Usain Bolt with Shaun Custis.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-61321-067-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  1. Bolt, Usain, 1986- 2. Runners (Sports)—Jamaica—

  Biography. I. Custis, Shaun. II. Title.

  GV1061.15.B66A3 2012

  796.42092--dc23

  2012024824

  ISBN: 978-1-61321-067-3

  eISBN: 978-1-61321-323-0

  Printed in the United States of America

  1 THE FASTEST MAN IN THE WORLD

  2 HOME

  Mrs Sheron Seivwright, Principal, Piedmont Basic School

  3 FAMILY

  Norman Peart, Manager

  4 GETTING STARTED

  Miss Mamrie Flash, Principal, Waldensia Primary School

  5 NEW COACH

  Devere Nugent, Former Sports Teacher,

  Waldensia Primary School

  6 GETTING SERIOUS

  Glen Mills, Coach

  7 BEIJING CALLING

  Christine Bolt-Hylton, Half-Sister

  8 ON TOP OF THE WORLD

  9 HOMECOMING

  Sadiki Runako Bolt, Half-Brother

  10 BERLIN AND BEYOND

  Aunty Lilly

  11 MY ISLAND IN THE SUN

  12 OFF THE TRACK

  13 COPING WITH FAME

  NJ (Nugent Walker Junior)

  14 HOT TOPIC

  Miss Lorna Thorpe,

  Head of Sports, William Knibb High School

  15 STRIVINg FOR MORE

  16 BEYOND MY SPORT

  Jennifer Bolt, Mother

  17 THE FUTURE

  Wellesley (Gideon) Bolt, Father

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PHOTO CREDITS

  USAIN BOLT – THE FASTEST MAN in the world. Never, ever do I get tired of hearing that. If you lined up a hundred people and asked them who the best basketball player in the world is, the best soccer player, or the best cricketer, it is unlikely they would provide the same answer. But ask any of them, “Who is the best sprinter in the world?” and there is only one answer – Usain Bolt. Why? Because that is what it says on the clock. There can be no dispute or argument. The record books say that over the 100 meters flat race, the true measure of human speed, I’m the fastest person that ever lived, completing the distance, as I did at the World Championships in Berlin, in 9.58 seconds.

  It is said that the population of the earth is 6.8 billion and that approximately 107 billion have lived on this planet since man came into being. It doesn’t get any cooler than knowing you are the fastest of them all.

  I chose to be a sprinter, not only because I was the fastest kid in school, but also because I knew that politics couldn’t interfere. In team sports it can be down to opinion whether you are the best. One coach might think you’re good enough for his team, another might not, or the side could be picked on friendship or family ties. But in athletics you are either the fastest or you aren’t – opinion doesn’t come into it.

  We had a grass track at the front of Waldensia Primary School, which is still there, exactly as it was, with a two-foot dip at the end of the straight, and when I first raced on it a guy named Ricardo Geddes would beat me. One day the sports coach, Devere Nugent, bet me a lunch that I could beat Ricardo. I like my food, so it was a big incentive. I won, enjoyed a nice meal, and never lost to Ricardo again. Winning that race was my first experience of the thrill of beating your closest rival, and from that day on my motto has always been “Once I’ve beaten you, you won’t beat me again.” There was quite a sporting rivalry between me and Ricardo, and I told him he should keep going with athletics but, like most kids in Jamaica, he wanted to play football, which he still does for one of the clubs on the island.

  Much as I loved football and cricket, running came so easy to me. Once I got Ricardo out of the way, I was the fastest, not only in school, but in the whole parish of Trelawny. And, after a few years in high school when I put my mind to training, I was
the quickest junior in Jamaica, then the world.

  As I went on to win gold medals and set world records at the Olympics and World Championships, I felt exactly the same about taking on my Jamaican teammate Asafa Powell and the Americans Wallace Spearmon and Tyson Gay as I did about racing against Ricardo Geddes. The aim was the same – to run as fast as you can and get to the line first, whether you are in the highly charged atmosphere of the 91,000-capacity Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing or on the school field.

  Just like at school, I always try to go faster and faster. When I clocked 9.72 seconds to set the world 100m record in New York, I knew I could do better; when I ran 9.69 to win gold at the Olympics, I knew there was a lot more to come; and now, having run 9.58 in Berlin, I believe I can go even faster.

  It is possible for me to run 9.4. You can’t be sure when or where, but the major competitions are when I take it seriously and shine through. That’s business time, and I’m not going to let anyone take my titles away, so the World Championships in Korea in 2011 or the London Olympics in 2012 are where it will probably happen.

  To get from 9.58 to 9.4 will involve a lot of hard work – it will have to be the perfect race from the start, through the drive phase, to making sure my focus is straight ahead and maintaining my form to the end. I’ve never been the best starter, but it’s improving, and I must stop looking from side to side, which is my worst habit. I lose time that way, but I can’t help it. My coach Glen Mills says he could cure the problem in an instant by putting blinkers on me like they do with racehorses.

  There is always something that could be better. Even when I think a race has gone well, Coach will say “no” and take me back through it, pointing out the faults. If you run 9.58 you are entitled to think it all came together, but Coach tells me the drive phase out of the blocks was too short, I got too tight in the middle, and my head was all over the place, so there’s room for improvement.

  I do believe there is a limit to how fast the human body can run, though, and I don’t see how the 100m record can ever go below 9.4. It is impossible to run 9.2, the body isn’t made to go that fast, no matter how hard you train, how good a shape you’re in or how good your technique.

  As for the 200 meters, I don’t know what the limit is. My 19.30 in Beijing broke Michael Johnson’s record of 19.32, which had stood for 12 years. But I run the corner much more efficiently now, which is why I got the record down to 19.19 at the 2009 World Championships. I dream of being the first man to go under 19 seconds.

  I was 24 in August 2010, and Coach says it will be at least two more years before I peak, maybe three. I’m nowhere near finished yet.

  WHENEVER I GET STRESSED BY LIFE, Trelawny, the parish where I was born in northwest Jamaica, is where I return. It’s quiet, with a slower pace to life. I can chill, and nobody bothers me. In Kingston, the Jamaican capital where I live because of my training demands, people are always calling up and coming to see me. That’s good, but sometimes you need to get away from it all. In Trelawny I can sit on the veranda outside Mom and Dad’s house, relax and clear my mind. People walk past and say “hi” but that’s it, man. They’ve known me since I was a youngster, so seeing me is no big deal.

  I’m a normal human being who can get stressed out once in a while, not about track and field, which never worries me, but personal things like girls, business and stuff that needs organising. Back home I’ll stay at Mom and Dad’s in Coxeath near Sherwood Content, go round to Aunty Lilly’s, visit my grandmother, and meet up with the guys who were my friends from way back when we played cricket together on the road outside our front door. We would cut a stump from a banana tree for a wicket and you were out if you hit the ball into the cow pen. We lost a lot of balls in there. The house has a light on the porch and we take a table out and play dominoes until the temperature drops so far that it’s too cold to sit out any longer. Life doesn’t get any simpler.

  I’m still in touch with many of my old teachers from my very first school, Piedmont Basic School, as well as Waldensia Primary and William Knibb High School. I started Basic School when I was two, and one of the teachers, Mrs Sheron Seivwright, is still there. My Principal at Waldensia, Miss Mamrie Flash, who always looked out for me, helps out there, even though she has retired. My sports coach at William Knibb, Miss Lorna Thorpe, who was like a second mother, is still going strong too. I owe so much to all of them for bringing me up in the right way.

  The drive home to Coxeath takes you off the main highway and away into the country along a winding single-track road, where somehow nobody crashes into anything coming the other way, even though there are so many blind corners and overhanging trees. Trust me, you get used to it. The journey takes you over a narrow bridge which crosses the Martha Brae River, where tourists who venture out that way can be seen drifting along on bamboo rafts. This is what they call Cockpit Country. It has all kinds of plant-life, insect and animal species and, at its heart, a tropical forest. On occasions when I had to go to work with Dad at the coffee company in Windsor I hated it, because it was deep into the vegetation and you’d get bitten by thousands of mosquitoes – they would never leave you alone.

  The approach to home takes me past Piedmont and Waldensia and the little athletics track where it all started for me. It’s a tight, 250m, not quite properly proportioned oval with an 80m flat track and that two-foot drop towards the finish line. I slipped once on the dirt on the corner during a house race at the age of nine and cried my eyes out. Whenever I look at that bend I can’t help cussing.

  As a child I was good at all sports, especially running, cricket and soccer. I liked being a goalkeeper and got loads of cuts and bruises from diving around on the stones in the grass making saves. Cricket was the big sport in primary school. I was a fast bowler as well as a number three batsmen. We were too young to use a proper cricket ball, but I was lethal with a plastic one and by grade six had learned to swing it through the air, which takes some doing.

  My early school years were the best time for me, so carefree, but if you were naughty you would be disciplined. I was a bit of a prankster in school and would find myself being disciplined a few times. Dad would also stamp his authority at home when necessary, and I would run from him. He enjoyed the chase too. If I stepped out of line at anytime I would hear about it. I was lucky to have Mom and Dad in the same house – that has helped me to be balanced right now.

  We actually had a lot of fun in school, like in grade five with Miss Roberts, who had false teeth which were always falling out. Once we went to a nearby sugar factory on a class field trip, and when we were giving her trouble she screamed at us so loudly that her teeth shot out of her mouth and fell down to the bottom of this hill. We couldn’t stop laughing.

  My best friend was “NJ”. I was known as “VJ”, so it seemed natural to pal up with an NJ – full name Nugent Walker junior. I don’t know why I was called VJ, but it’s a Jamaican tradition that your parents and relatives call you by a pet name. If anyone calls me VJ rather than Usain you know they are from Trelawny – and if you think that’s odd, my dad’s name is Wellesley yet everybody calls him Gideon. Work that out.

  The sports coach at Waldensia, Mr. Nugent, who also taught us math, was good, but he could be scary. One day he left us to study our 1-15 times tables – not something we were very excited about – so we started playing soccer around the classroom. Suddenly, as NJ was back-pedalling, Mr. Nugent came from nowhere and grabbed him, hitting him twice and sending him out. I ran off so fast, thinking he was going to get me too, that I might have beaten 9.58 that very day. Mr. Nugent wasn’t really a beater, though, he was more of a pincher, having perfected a technique where he would nip you hard above the waist. That really hurt sometimes.

  The first prize I won was a cup for a primary school race in grade four, and many more followed, although Mom had an amazing ability to break them as soon as I’d brought them home. There are a few still on display in the house, but I don’t know how they’ve survived. Everyone in my
family breaks things – glasses, tea-cups, plates. If it can be smashed, it gets smashed, so now they drink out of plastic cups and eat off plastic plates just to be on the safe side.

  MY EARY SCHOOL YEARS WERE THE BEST TIME FOR ME, SO CAREFREE, BUT IF YOU WERE NAUGHTY YOU WOULD BE DISCIPLINED.

  I was picked for the parish primary school team after winning at Trelawny sports day and discovered that, while I might have been the fastest in my part of Jamaica, there were plenty of other guys on the island who could run too. In two years of competing at the national championships I was nowhere, which was hardly the mark of an athletics legend in the making. I got my ass kicked over 100 and 150 meters, but it didn’t bother me because to me running was for fun, I wasn’t practicing for the Olympics.

  However, I was quick enough to get a sports scholarship to William Knibb, one of the best schools in Trelawny. There was no other way I would have got in because, although I was reasonably bright, there were plenty of kids more intelligent than me. I could cope there – I wasn’t a class dunce – but having earned my place on a sports ticket they expected me to be out training every night on the school field. For me this was all wrong – running was supposed to be a hobby, not something you had to work at – and I saw myself mainly as a cricketer who only did track and field because he was fast.

  During my first year at William Knibb I skipped training after school all the time. I’d go into Falmouth with my friends Pete and Nimrod and we’d spend our dinner money on playing video games. We lived for going to the games room, which was run by a guy named Floyd. There were four Nintendo 64s and four TVs, and you paid a Jamaican dollar per minute to play, which we did until our money ran out. When I got home and my parents asked how training had gone, I would say, “Yeah, it was good.”

  They never suspected anything and I wasn’t worried about being found out, but it all changed when one of my mom’s nieces spilled on me and told my dad. He was not happy and came up to school for a meeting with the coach, Mr Pablo McNeil – who was a former Olympic sprinter – and the head of sports, Miss Thorpe. They lectured me, explaining the importance of training, that my athletics ability was the reason the school accepted me and that if I didn’t do it they would take the scholarship away. I understood, and I also knew Dad would kill me if I didn’t do it – so, although I still went to the games room once in a while, training took priority from then on.