The nuts and bolts of a RECORD RUN

With each of his recordbreaking runs, Usain Bolt is inching closer to athletic immortality. Forgive the cynicism; if the Jamaican ends his career without a doping slur, he would have cemented his place in the history of track events as the person who expanded the boundaries of human capabilities.Many super-human running stars
including a certain black American who made the 1936 Berlin Olympics his own have graced the track. But Bolt appears to be the real deal for the ease with which he
singes records. The athletic world hasn’t seen a more compelling package of efficiency and entertainment. Michael Johnson used to run and break records with predictable regularity but the American himself is in awe of the Jamaican for whom raising the bar in style has become a habit. Bolt has brought fun to thesprint after Ben Johnson’s pharmaceutical effort in the 1988 Seoul Olympics had taken it away from
the foundation of all sporting disciplines. Bolt started off as a 200m specialist. Only when he broke the 100m world record on May 31 last year, did the Jamaican’s name make it to the probable list of Beijing winners in the short sprint. The Bird’s Nest, the iconic athletic stadium in the Chinese capital, belonged to Bolt on August 16, 2008, as he set a record of 9.69 seconds on his way to gold in the 100m. In a rare coincidence,the fun-loving Jamaican has obliterated his record on the same date
(August 16) a year later at Berlin. The progression of the 100m record over the years presents an interesting study. When Jesse Owens stopped the clock at 10.3
seconds for a gold medal at the 1936 Olympics, few would have envisaged that it would take another 32 years for someone to go under 10 seconds. American Jim Hines
recorded the first electronic sub-10 100m (9.95 seconds) in Mexico on September 14, 1968. Until Bolt’s majestic run in Berlin on Sunday, the 100m record was never bettered by 11 hundredths of a second. Bolt’s 6’5” frame doesn’t make him the best of starters. Even on Sunday, he was only the sixth fastest off the blocks. Among the eventual top three, Asafa Powell had the best start with a reaction time of 0.134 seconds, followed by Gay at 0.144. Bolt’s was 0.146. Reaction time is the speed with which one reacts to the starting gun. Anything less than 0.1 second is a false start. Bolt was slow only at the blocks; in every 20m he was on top.
According to the biome chanical analysis released by the IAAF, the Jamaican had solved his starting problem by covering the first 20m in 2.89 seconds, slightly ahead of Trinidad’s Richard Thompson who incidentally had the best reaction time of 0.119 seconds. From the 20- 40m mark, Bolt pulled clear in his inimitable style to register his fastest for the 60-80m section at 1.61 seconds. In just 33 royal strides, the Jamaican covered the 100m in 9.58 seconds with the tailwind measuring
0.2 metres/second.


TIMINGS
0-20m: 2.89s; 20-40:
1.75s; 40-60: 1.67s; 60-80:
1.61s; 80-100: 1.66s.
REACTION TIMES
Bolt: 0.146s; Gay: 0.144s;
Powell: 0.134s; Bailey:
0.129s; Thompson:
0.119s; Chambers: 0.123s;
Burns: 0.165s; Patton:
0.149s.
Progress chart