Usain Bolt Is King of the Bold, Brash Badasses Who Have Made the 100-Meter Great
They walked under the stands together on their way to the track for an Olympic relay in Beijing. Usain Bolt and his Jamaican teammates were followed by the team from Trinidad and Tobago. And the T&T team offered Bolt a little advice, telling him not to "drop the stick." They told him how embarrassing that would be in front of the whole world, and that while he did it, "We are going to run past you."
Bolt, and I'm going on memories from 2008 here, told them that during the race, they should enjoy the view of the bottom of his shoes.
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That was the same year International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge was calling Bolt a "problem,'' saying Bolt wasn't displaying the proper sportsmanship the Olympics were all about. Basically, Rogge was wrong. In fact, it's that attitude that makes the top short-distance races so great.
It's also what makes the men's 100-meter race the most important event at the Olympics. So, no offense to the greatness of Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky and Simone Biles. It has been fun. But now, we move on to the main event at the Rio Olympics: Bolt winning the 100 meters.
If he wins it for the third consecutive time—and he will—then he is the greatest Olympian ever.
I've been lucky enough to go to five Olympics, and the thing that stands out each time is the blending of different cultures as the city packs with fans who might not even get into an event. And maybe the U.S. audience doesn't feel this way about the 100 anymore because too many years have passed since Carl Lewis' days, but the world's sports rock star is Bolt. He's the guy everyone from everywhere talks about at the Games.
Consider this: At the London Olympics in 2012, they were giving away tickets to government officials and to military officers to fill the stands at the swimming events where Phelps kept winning. Meanwhile, for Bolt and the 100 final, they filled an 80,000-seat stadium. And also, this:
They turned away two million ticket requests.
Two. Million.
This year, the only person who has a prayer of beating Bolt is American Justin Gatlin. But even before Bolt's days, the men's 100-meter was the main event.
Why? Well, there's history and meaning behind that race. But the race itself also creates the history. Jesse Owens may not have been as historically significant if he hadn't won the 100. Ben Johnson's steroid bust wouldn't have been as notorious in any other event.
There is a rawness, directness and undeniability to the 100 final. The strategy: Run fast. Now! No tricks. It is about who is the fastest man on the planet.
But at least with the modern race, it resonates with fans, too, because it isn't just a race. It's an attitude. It's such an open nerve ending that it gets an entire stadium filled with people feeling it.
It is actually difficult to breathe when you're watching the Olympic 100 final. Tens of thousands of people become frantic about the same thing at the same time. And you don't want to blink because you'll miss too much of the race. So you hold your breath, you don't blink, and you become overwhelmed with people from all different places.
What does that have to do with sportsmanship and the athletes on the track? I think it's that they feel the same way. People talk about Bolt's cockiness and arrogance, but before Bolt, before Gatlin, Maurice Greene was the fastest man on the planet—the Olympic 100-meter champ.
He had GOAT tattooed on his arm: Greatest of All Time. And when he won a relay in Australia, he and his U.S. teammates celebrated and danced around with the American flag.
And they were basically crushed for bad sportsmanship.
But when you see these guys up close, and how they interact, you can see it isn’t bad manners at all. It is the boldness that comes with the kind of person who runs that race. It's a stick-your-chest-out attitude you have to have if you're going to win.
Rogge described it in 2008 as an attitude of "Catch me if you can.'' He meant it as a criticism. It is a thrill.
You see the same thing in 50-meter sprint swimmers. And in some wide receivers. It's not bad manners. These guys will all dance and preen and point to themselves on the starting line, and not one guy there will be offended by another guy doing it. This isn't baseball, where if you look at a guy sideways it's an outrage.
In the 2008 Olympic final, Bolt broke the world record. But he would have broken it by more if he hadn't turned sideways and posed just before crossing the finish line.
If you watched the first heats of the 100 on Saturday, you saw American Trayvon Bromell finish his race and advance to Sunday's semifinals. An NBC reporter asked him what he would do differently in the next round, and Bromell said, "I don't do nothing different. I just do me."
Awesome. That's the 100 meters. A self-absorbed adrenaline rush.
And by the way: In 2008, after Bolt's relay team beat the Trinidad and Tobago team that had been taunting them before the race, they walked off laughing together.
One of them yelled out that the beer was on them that night.
Greg Couch covers the Olympics for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @gregcouch.
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