Bolt, the son of grocers in Jamaica’s rural parish, excelled as a cricket fast bowler in his preteen years. He developed a deep affection for the European football (soccer) teams Real Madrid and Manchester United, but his school coaches steered him toward track and field. Bolt first marked himself as a track prodigy at the 2002 world junior championships. In that meet, racing before a crowd of 36,000 in Jamaica’s National Stadium in Kingston, Bolt—just 15 years old at the time—won gold in the 200 meters, becoming the youngest-ever male world junior champion in any event. At age 16 Bolt cut the junior (age 19 and under) 200-meter world record to 20.13 sec, and at 17 he ran the event in 19.93 sec, becoming the first teenager to break 20 seconds in the race. However, hampered by a hamstring injury, he failed to advance beyond the 200-meter heats at the 2004 Olympics in Athens and placed last in the 2005 world track-and-field championships final.
At 6 feet 5 inches (1.96 meters), Bolt defied the conventional wisdom that very tall sprinters are disadvantaged as fast starters. In 2007, he appeared newly dedicated to his training and earned a silver medal in the 200 meters at the world championships. He also persuaded his coach to let him try the 100 meters, and he ran 10.03 sec in his first professional race at the distance. On May 3, 2008, he lowered his best time to 9.76 sec, then the world’s second-fastest mark. Four weeks later in New York City, Bolt broke the world record, running 9.72 sec to defeat world champion Tyson Gay.
At the 2008 Olympic Games, Bolt became the first man since American Carl Lewis in 1984 to win the 100 meters, 200 meters, and 4 × 100-meter relay in a single Olympics and the first ever to set world records (9.69 sec, 19.30 sec, and 37.10 sec, respectively) in all three events. (However, a failed drug test by one of his 4 × 100 teammates led to Bolt’s having his gold medal in that event stripped.) His 0.66-sec winning margin in the 200-meter race was the largest in Olympic history, and his 0.20-sec edge over the second-place finisher in the 100 meters, despite beginning his victory celebration about 80 meters into the race, was the largest since Lewis won by the same margin. At the 2009 world championships, Bolt shattered his 100-meter record, winning the event final in 9.58 sec. Four days later, he broke his own 200-meter record by the same 0.11-sec margin to win a second gold medal.
Bolt published a memoir, My Story: 9:58: The World’s Fastest Man (written with Shaun Curtis), in 2010. It was expanded and reissued as The Fastest Man Alive: The True Story of Usain Bolt in 2012.
sprint, also called dash, in athletics (track and field), a footrace over a short distance with an all-out or nearly all-out burst of speed, the chief distances being 100, 200, and 400 meters and 100, 220, and 440 yards.
Usain Bolt was the son of grocers in Jamaica’s rural parish. He excelled as a cricket fast bowler in his preteen years, and developed a deep affection for the European football (soccer) teams Real Madrid and Manchester United.
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