It is unfair to compare sprinters to Usain Bolt
In the 100 meter dash we have a brand new world champion. It is Noah Lyles, and almost nobody really expected him to pull out the victory. He ran 9.83 to do it which is very fast, but it’s nowhere near as fast as what most fans were hoping to see. The 100 meter dash is the fastest race in all of track and field. But right about now it feels like everybody is moving pretty slowly. However, it is clear who is to blame for that, it’s Usain Bolt. It was amazing to watch lightning strike three times. Yet the end result of that is for all of us as track and field fans to have to cope with being blinded by the fast times. The truth is people don’t really remember what sprinting was like before Usain Bolt took over the sport. There may never be another sprinter quite like him in this lifetime. So the world we are living in now, is an era we are going to have to get used to, because things are not changing in the 100 meter dash any time soon.
The 100 meter dash prior to Usain Bolt
Before Usain Bolt dominated the 100 meter dash, things looked very different in that event. Breaking the 9.9 second barrier in the 100 meter dash is really hard to do, and now it is taken for granted. Up until 1987 nobody had ever broken 9.9 at all. That’s when Ben Johnson happened. But if you go looking for his name in the record books, you’re not going to find much. His times from both 1987 and 1988 were disqualified for a reason that is very well documented. He ran 9.79 back then, a time that was so shocking that it seemed too good to be true, because it was too good to be true. For the next decade fans waited to see anyone run 9.7 and nobody could pull it off. So the world champions in that era like Carl Lewis, and every champion after him accomplished that feat by running 9.8 something to do it.
It was Maurice Green who ran 9.79 in 1999 to change the sprinting game. He actually won every single world championship or Olympic 100 meter dash from 1997 to 2001. After that a bunch of people tried to run fast and the only name you might remember is Asafa Powell, because the same thing they said about Ben Johnson they said about a bunch of other sprinters. Nobody else ran 9.7 and was actually left standing on the record books, besides Asafa. For the record Justin Gatlin won the Olympics and the World Championships back then, but he never ran faster than 9.85 either when he did. After all that Usain Bolt showed up and dominated the world. So you have to understand that what he did was honestly the unthinkable.
How fast was Usain Bolt really?
Usain Bolt didn’t just win 100 meter dash races, he demolished them. He broke the World Record in New York City, running 9.72 in 2008. Then he went 9.69 later that year in the Olympics. And followed it up running 9.58 the following year. We know that he kept winning after that, but the damage was already done. Statistically speaking all of the other fast times from that era are a product of the “Usain Bolt effect”. Sprintters like Tyson Gay, Yohan Blake, Nesta Carter, and even Justin Gatlin himself were running fast times during the Bolt era. But that doesn’t really count because they weren’t in the front of the race. Any legitimate sprinter will likely run their PR in a race that they lose. That’s because whoever is out in front is pulling them along. That is unless of course you are the champion. Remember, if you’re not first you’re last in the eyes of track and field fans. So it is not impressive how fast you run if you weren’t in the front of the race to pull it off.
The sprinting world after Usain Bolt
Now that Usain Bolt is gone, we have finally come back down to reality. Unless you’re counting Yohan Blake, nobody in the game right now, has ever run faster than 9.76. Keep in mind, Bolt’s record is 9.58! So if it feels like they’re running slower, it’s because they actually are. The fastest men in the world don’t have Bolt to help them take their bodies to the brink of human capability. Of the men who have done it, running 9.7 anything, only Christian Coleman did it with less wind than Bolt used to run the World Record. Breaking 9.9 is already next level sprinting, but faster than 9.8 is out of this world. In fact, when Noah Lyles ran 9.83 to win the entire world it became not only his PR but the fastest time in the world in 2023. Noah Lyles clearly is not slow, he’s actually really fast, but Bolt was just even faster. Fans want to see fast times, and that is understandable. But if the men who are sprinting right now, don’t plan to do anything suspicious with their training, we should get used to appreciating the best they have to offer. We are witnessing the fastest sprinters that have ever existed in just about any era. But they don’t have the fastest man to ever run throughout history to show them how to go even faster. So I guess the track and field world has no choice but to be ok with that.
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