A cricket coach spotted the speed that made Usain Bolt the fastest man ever
Usain Bolt spent his childhood playing cricket and football in the streets of rural Jamaica. At high school, his cricket coach noticed how fast he ran between the wickets and nudged him toward the track. In 2009 he ran 100 metres in 9.58 seconds, a world record that still stands.
Bolt was born in 1986 in Sherwood Content, a small Jamaican town where his parents ran the grocery store. By 12 he was the quickest 100-metre runner at his primary school. At William Knibb Memorial High School, the former Olympic sprinter Pablo McNeil became his main coach, sometimes exasperated by the teenager's patchy training and love of pranks. Once, when he should have been getting ready for a 200-metre final at the regional trials, Bolt hid in the back of a van and ended up detained by police.
The talent was undeniable anyway. In 2001 he took silver in the 400 and 200 metres at the CARIFTA Games, and the next year set championship records at the same meet. Former prime minister P. J. Patterson arranged for him to move to Kingston to train at the University of Technology. Bolt is one of only eleven athletes to win world titles at youth, junior and senior level, and his under-18 and under-20 records in the 200 metres survived until Erriyon Knighton broke them in 2021.
The 2008 Beijing Olympics were his first international 100-metre race, and he won it and the 200 in world-record times, the first man to hold both marks since fully automatic timing became compulsory. A year later he cut the 100 record from 9.69 to 9.58, the largest single improvement of the electronic era, and lowered the 200 record to 19.19. With Jamaica's relay team he set a 4 × 100 metres record of 36.84 seconds in 2012.
He remains the only sprinter to win both individual Olympic sprints at three straight Games, 2008, 2012 and 2016, and collected eight Olympic golds and eleven world titles. His only world championship slip in that stretch was a false start in the 2011 100 metres. He retired after the 2017 world championships, taking bronze in his final solo 100 metres.
Source: Usain Bolt
