23 miles per hour. 23 miles per hour...a speed so high that if you were in a school zone would earn you a speeding ticket. And for nearly 328 feet, Usain Bolt, a man whose name signifies the speedy brilliance that he can bring to a track, reached that speed...but he didn't do it in a car or even a bicycle. No, he did it with his own two legs.
For almost 6 years now, this Jamaican man: Usain Bolt has been the face of professional sprinting. He has never failed to win an Olympic event he has entered and has been undefeated at the World Championships since 2008. Yet after all that he has accomplished, a still relatively young 26 year old Bolt came to Moscow this year with one goal in mind...to do it all again. Kicking off his Moscow campaign back on August 10th, Bolt and his competitors were faced with an ironic situation.
On that early August night, the 'Lightning Bolt' as he is sometimes referred to as was not the only such sense of power within the vicinity of that 100 meter start line. As ironic as it may seem, Ussain Bolt and company spent the duration of their near 10 second long explosion of speed dodging puddles and maybe hoping that that purple bolt of lightning pictured above did not, you know...kill them :).
In all truth though, the rain and muggy atmosphere of that western Russian night, in all likelihood, did effect the ending speed of the fastest man alive. Despite winning the race, he did so in far from Bolt like fashion.
7 days later, here we were, running for 200 meter gold. But like the 100, he won it in a pathetic time of 19.66. 19.66 was almost 4 tenths of a second slower than his world record set in 2009 and a full 2 tenths slower than his previous all-time low... and this time he didn't have the benefit of the rain to extinguish his struggles.
Fact it, perhaps the only way Bolt won last night was the fact that this race was largely devoid of any of the starts this 200 meter community has produced over the past few years. Fellow Jamaican: Yohan Blake was gone (injury), and then you have the Americans. Tyson Gay was dished for a drug violation and Justin Gatlin who just didn't feel like running last night.
Fact is, while Bolt's win could partially be attributed to 'luck', the sheer fact that he moved his body at 23 miles per hour reigns supreme. Usain Bolt is the fastest human in recorded history and when you can boast that kind of success you are bound to win, well, everything.
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