Usain Bolt: The man, the freak, the legend.
We used to have a term in our University biomechanics class – outlier.
You weren’t supposed to say ‘freak’, no matter how many times people said freak. No matter how much one man forced you to say it.
The appropriate description was outlier.
Usain Bolt, his abilities, his mechanics, his feats, lay outside the norm of what was expected and what was the trend. He bucked it and then some and he came back for more. And he hasn’t stopped coming back for more.
He is the very definition of an outlier. A freak, if you will.
Even his 100m record of 9.58 seconds is impossibly rational. Studies have suggested that the fastest a human being could ever run – based on their mechanics, based on how big of a stride they could take and still move that stride at optimal speed – would be 9.48 seconds. That’s what is physically possible. Ever.
And Bolt was a tenth of a second shy of it.
So he comes into the 200m final off the back of a semi where he literally took the piss and it’s business as usual. Outlier business. Business the rest of us wouldn’t or couldn’t understand.
An eighth gold medal for the Jamaican, more of the fastest men on earth made to look distinctly average, and jaws dropping all over the world.
Usain Bolt – 19.78 seconds
Andre De Grasse – 20.02 seconds
Christophe Lemaitre – 20.12 seconds
He wins, naturally. But he does it in the most unnatural fashion.
In case you missed greatness! Watch @UsainBolt make History via @ESPN (Channel 304) or the #ESPNPlayApp #DigicelPlay pic.twitter.com/Xfcr7g3E1B
— Digicel Jamaica (@DIGICELJamaica) August 19, 2016
Running at a speed of over 27 mph, he really is making us doubt his mortal status.
#UsainBolt's speed measurement pic.twitter.com/wHtwlxPc5F
— Sulayman Makalo (@MakaloMansa) August 19, 2016
And how he’s smoking competitors on the bend is just frightening.
https://twitter.com/TheRealTeeMarie/status/766464910150729730
He’s 30 on Sunday. Before then (tonight, Saturday morning at 2.35am), he’s got the 4x100m final to contest. Still though, he’s got us all mesmerised. He’s got us all singing his praises.
https://twitter.com/lovebscott/status/766485623976841216
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