Martin LeFevre: Bolt From the Blue

Bolt From the Blue

Bolt (centre) in the starting blocks before his world record run last week

In the same stadium that Jesse Owens made a fool of Hitler and the Nazi credo of Aryan superiority, Usain Bolt of Jamaica smashed the 100 and 200-meter records in the Track and Field World Championships last week. Bolt may have even eclipsed Owens, by performing two of the most mind-boggling athletic feats of all time.

The people of Berlin were blown away by the charismatic, continually clowning Bolt. So they’re shipping him a nearly 4 meter high 3-ton piece of the Berlin Wall, decorated with a life-size painting of Bolt running on the blue track of the Olympic stadium. As Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit said, Bolt had shown that “one can tear down walls that had been considered as insurmountable.”

I competed in the events in which Bolt performed his otherworldly performances, and remain stunned by what he did in Berlin. The sprints are races in which victories and records are measured by hundredths of a second. Bolt obliterated his own Olympic record in the 100 meters by more than a tenth of second, taking his great 9.69 in Beijing to a jaw-dropping 9.58 in Berlin.

His 200-meter world record was even more mind- boggling. Most experts thought the 19.31 record he set in Beijing was safe, since Bolt lacked the competition, and they thought, the incentive, to break it. He showed that beneath the chillin’ mask of the clown is a very serious athlete however, one who gives his all in every race.

One lap of the track is 400 meters. The 200-meter starts on a turn and is completed on a straightaway. At 6 foot five inches (1.96 meters) Bolt is exceptionally tall f0r a sprinter, and at nearly 30 mph (or 48.3 kilometers an hour!), the turn, even on outdoor tracks, exerts significant centrifugal force. Bolt ran an incomprehensible 19.19 at the World Championships.

The greatest thing about Usain Bolt is his joy and awe at his own feats, and the way he establishes camaraderie in a sport of primadonna head trippers. Bolt exudes a childlike love of running fast, and he seems to have almost as much wonder at his preternatural athletic prowess as we mortals do. When he makes a flight motion just before the command, “runners, take your marks,” scooping his arms up and out like he’s a plane about to take off, he’s conveying what it feels like to have that kind of speed.

But to some degree, all sprinters in decent shape, no matter what their age, know that feeling, even in a good practice. The fellow who got me running competitively again at 30 was 75, and still running races in his age division.

Some bodies are built for distance, some for speed, and some a mixture of both. A sprinter coming off a turn at full tilt has the closest sensation to flying that a human being can have under his or her own unaided power.

When I ran track in college 25 years ago, 30 was considered old for a sprinter. Now there are professional sprinters still in their prime at 35. Bolt turned 23 in Berlin at the World Championships. He has a Tiger Woods attitude toward the sport—namely, that true greatness is achieved by excellence over time. He’s not done breaking 100 and 200 meter records; the imagination balks at considering what his six foot five inch stride will do in the 400 meters.

At this writing, Greece, the cradle of Western civilization burns, and the great antiquities of Athens, including the Parthenon, are threatened. One Greek commentator called the smoky fires, which turned a sunny Sunday into night, “an eclipse of hope.”

No one knows what human beings are capable of achieving. Breakthroughs, whether tearing down the Berlin Wall, or surpassing previously “insurmountable” sprint records, come when we least expect them. Usain Bolt’s athletic achievements demonstrate once again that the possible is always greater than what we think is possible.

Martin LeFevre

Martin LeFevre is a contemplative and philosopher. More of his work and an archive can be found at the Colorado-based site Fountain of Light (fountainoflight.net). martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net

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