Usain Bolt shatters another world record. Must be the yams!
At the world championships in Berlin today, Bolt ran the 200 meter sprint in 19.19 seconds. How does he do it?
Jamaica's Usain Bolt poses beside the timing board showing the new World Record after he won the Men's 200m final during the World Athletics Championships in Berlin on Thursday.
Anja Niedringhaus/AP
Somebody please make it stop.
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That Jamaican, he keeps messin' with our heads.
Usain Bolt keeps doing things that shouldn’t be done. Things that boggle the mind.
He makes older sprinters start to think about other careers. He makes liars out of track commentators.
This time, the fastman from Trelawny, Jamaica, brutalized his own 200-meter world record set last year in Beijing.
Today, at the world championships in Berlin, he ran the 200 meter sprint in 19.19 seconds. And he won going away with the largest margin of victory in that race in Olympic or world history.
That’s two world records in one week. Five world records in his last five championship races.
Staying loose
Before the race, Bolt strolled around the track taking in the atmosphere while sporting a Jamaican warm-up shirt with the slogan: “Ich bin ein Berliner.”
He traded fake punches with fellow competitor (and fellow goof-off), American sprinter, Wallace Spearmon.
He moved toward the camera, put his right hand, then his left hand “through” his hair and said to the world: “Come get me.”
At that point, no one but Bolt thought he’d set a world record - let alone win.
Days earlier, American sprinter Shawn Crawford called Bolt a dragon, followed by, “but I’m a dragon slayer.”
Um, not this time.
American sprinting legend Michael Johnson told Agence France-Presse that he didn’t think Bolt would break a record.
"His exertions this week have taken a lot out of him," said Mr. Johnson, whose 200m world record was broken by Bolt in Beijing last year in the Olympic final when the Jamaican ran 19.30 seconds. "He's also been very busy and he looks tired. It is certainly less possible than it was a few nights ago. Also he has said that his training this year hasn't been as good as last year."
Riiight.
Just before the race former championship sprinter and NBC announcer, Ato Boldon, said that Bolt would not set a world record.
Moments later, Boldon was noshing on crow.
Bolt led from the get-go and by the midway point he was meters ahead of a pack of the world's fastest runners. He crossed the finish line with a grimace.
“He made a liar out of me tonight,” said Mr. Boldon. “That’s what I get for doubting the Lightning Bolt.”
“This might be the biggest and greatest world record he’s broken,” Boldon said, explaining that the track world had thought Bolt would struggle for a long time to get anywhere near 19.20.
MJ, Tiger, …. Bolt?
This all begs the question: Is it too early to start talking about Bolt in the same breath as other athletes whose performance literally changed their sport, champions such as Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods?
Too early? The answer has to be an emphatic “No.”




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