The clown prince of sprints has shoved Michael Phelps aside in a couple of blinks of the eye at the Beijing Games.
Usain Bolt, the Jamaican who does not miss a chance to play to the cameras and crowd, astonished track and field aficionados with his world-record bursts in the 100 and 200, once the leading lights of the Olympic Games until doping became synonymous with the events.
Bolt already is inspiring those whispers because of his dominance and Jamaica’s imperfect drug-testing program, deemed insufficient by none other than Victor Conte, BALCO’s mad scientist.
In the New York Daily News this week, Conte wrote, “I have no evidence of doping by any of the winners in Beijing, but when times begin falling like rain, questions arise, especially when the record-setters are from Jamaica and other Caribbean nations where there is no independent anti-doping federation.”
For now, the world is allowed to revel in the sight of the man-child with the 9-foot stride and 6-foot-5 height.
Bolt copped a world record in the 100 after hamming it up in his last seven strides.
It cost him time, if not a few additional supporters displeased with his antics, but not a place in track and field history.
Jacques Rogge, president of the IOC, took time from shaking hands with all the right people to judge the deportment of Bolt.
He gave it low scores in keeping with the mysterious judging standards of the Olympic Games.
“I understand the joy,” Rogge said of Bolt’s display in the 100. “He might have interpreted that in another way, but the way it was perceived was, ’Catch me if you can.’ You don’t do that. But he’ll learn. He’s still a young man.”
Rogge probably could use less starch in his shirts.
It is being suggested that Bolt is the bookend to Phelps in the Beijing Games, their achievements nearly equal, discounting the number of gold medals, the eight of Phelps and the two of Bolt.
That is a lot of gold to discount, even if Bolt adds a third gold in the 400 relay.
It also is true that Bolt does not have the same number of gold medal opportunities as Phelps, not unless track and field’s governing body and the IOC agree to add the one-hand-tied-behind-the-back 50 and the synchronized Greco-Roman 150, or whatever else the suits could contrive to fit on the schedule.
Bolt would be favored in all the races, even if he took time out to floss his teeth in each of them.
Bolt just might take his position in track and field more seriously in the years ahead. He just turned 22 years old, one Olympiad removed from the prime of his career, and is not programmed by media-savvy handlers just yet.
If required to choose the defining figure of these Olympic Games, Phelps rates the nod.
Phelps won two gold medals by a fingernail, his and Jason Lezak’s. Organizers could have held the same events the following day and come up with different winners, so agonizingly close each was.
That is one barometer of a champion - the capacity to pull something unknown from the depths of your body if prompted.
Bolt has not been challenged in that fashion yet.
As it is, Bolt is having way too much fun in a discipline that measures greatness by hundreds of a second.
He is the sunshine to Phelps’ primal scream. Both exude an air of goofiness.
Bolt comes from an island nation whose most famous Olympians were the 1988 bobsledders. Jamaica was previously known as the birthplace of reggae music and Bob Marley. Bolt, if pure, now joins the list.
He also is the exclamation point of a track and field program that is accumulating medals at a statistically improbable rate, Jamaica being a nation of 2.7 million.
He may own the second week of this Olympiad.
Yet history will show that Phelps’ feat is the more durable of the two.
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