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Beijing 2008: Men 100m report

9.69 seconds - World Record

For RACE ANALYSIS, including split times, and average speeds for Usain Bolt's world record: Click HERE

Usain Bolt delivered. Nobody else stood a chance. It was quite simply the most devastating display of 100m sprinting I have ever seen. The "race" that everyone (including us) had predicted never materialised - Bolt was just too good (and Powell bad, it has to be said).

The world record in the 100m is always a special occasion. When it comes on the biggest stage in world sport, the Olympic Games, it's that much more spectacular. And it does not get much more spectacular than the sight of a man destroying the next seven fastest men in the world, celebrating about 20m from the finish line, pumping his fist against his chest with 10 m still to go, and still breaking the world record by 0.03 seconds. Truly incredible.

A race of surprises...except for the world record

The only thing about this race that was NOT surprsing was that the world record was broken. Everything else was something of a shock. Those shocks began in the semi-final, when Tyson Gay, the world champion from the USA failed to qualify after finishing fifth in his heat. That meant that the much-anticipated showdown between the three giants of world sprinting - Bolt, Asafa Powell and Gay - failed to materialize (it also made something of a mockery of my earlier pre-race prediction, which was done BEFORE the semi-final! I'm going to claim that at least I picked the winner, and almost got the winning time right too...!)

In any event, Gay's presence in the final would hardly have made a difference, so dominant was Bolt. But it is a great shame that he hurt himself in the US trials, because perhaps he might have pushed Bolt a little harder and we'd have seen a 9.65s time, so comfortable was the Jamaican in the absence of any rivals in this race.

Powell fails - slower in the final than the semi

The next big surprise was the failure of Asafa Powell to deliver in the final. The big Jamaican, who had beaten Bolt earlier this year, was completely unable to raise his game when it mattered, and finished a very disappointing fifth place. His time in the final? 9.95 seconds. His time in the evening's earlier semi-final? 9.91 seconds. Which means that, for the second big championships in a row, he actually ran a slower race in the final than in a qualifying heat. That performance will serve only to re-inforce the perception that Powell is not a big-race runner. Last year, we mentioned the word "choker", which is a little harsh, of course, but Powell has tried for the past year to shake that particular title. Tonight, he failed, and the title fits a little better. On second thought, perhaps his performance wasn't such a surprise, after all...

Thanks to Powell's disappointing run, the minor medals were won by Richard Thompson of Trinidad and Tobago (silver in 9.89 s) and Walter Dix of the USA (9.91 s for bronze), which was the third big surprise. Both are PB's, which is as much as one could ask in a big final like this. Fourth went to Churandy Martina of Netherlands Antilles, in a national record, which would have been their first medal - 0.02 seconds denied them that glory.

Bolt - the star of the show, a magnificent performance

But the star of the show was Bolt. The race was expected to be close, fast and exciting. It was two of the three, but "close" is not a word that fits this final. In fact, the much anticipated "race" never materialised, thanks in part to Gay's semi-final exit and Powell's "no-show". But the main reason was that Bolt was ridiculously fast.

His start was, as usual, not particularly spectacular. After about 30 m of running, he was mid-pack, with Thompson in Lane 5 slightly ahead of him. Powell also got off to a good start. But after about 30m, as Bolt's head came up, he took control of the race and the men who up to that point had looked competitive suddenly looked very ordinary.

There cannot be a runner with this kind of acceleration from 30 m in the history of the event. Of course, every generation has runners who are dangerous in the latter half of the race, but Bolt, running 9.69s, moved away from men running 9.89 s and created a 0.2 second lead by the finish line. It was astonishing sprinting.

When the cameras showed the race from the front, you could see Bolt actually glancing across to his right, where he knew the big threats would come from. Bolt virtually ran the 100m Olympic Final as a tactical race - he knew where his rivals were, he created a lead between 30m and 80m, and then he celebrated.

About 20m from the line, his arms dropped to his side. About 10m from the line, he leaned backwards, and gave himself a chest thump with his right hand. He crossed the line and kept running, bouncing all the way to the back straight as the crowd erupted. That celebration cost Bolt some time - who knows how much? Perhaps he was capable of 9.65 seconds had he continued at the same rhythm.

In the end, it didn't matter. Bolt had the time to celebrate mid race, to look natural and easy running 9.69 seconds.

Usain Bolt - a new "breed" of sprinter

Bolt is a different type of sprinter - previous champions, like Maurice Greene have been muscular, powerful, strong men, who burn up the track with the sheer force of their running. Bolt is different - he bounces, flows like water, and looks incredibly easy running faster than anyone else has ever been able to. I would love to see a biomechanics analysis of the race, but for a basic illustration of the difference, consider that Bolt took 41 steps to run the race; everyone else took 44 steps.

What is the physiology that underlies this advantage? Very difficult to say...explosive muscles, certainly. Muscle power, yes. But there's something there that no scientist can measure. I believe the big difference is neurological. It is the ability of the brain/central nervous system to control and co-ordinate the muscles, creating the spring. There is something called the stretch-shortening cycle, where energy that is stored on landing is harnessed during the push-off phase, so that the muscle-tendon unit acts like a spring.

It's possible to measure this stretch-shortening cycle activity, but not during sprinting like this. I believe (and this is a bald assertion, admittedly) that what sets Bolt apart is his muscle tendon unit, and the ability of the brain to co-ordinate the timing and sequence of muscle activation. Science can't measure this, but the next time you see a repeat of this race, watch Bolt compared to the men either side of him, and you can see it. And so just watching Bolt allows us to appreciate what it takes to be the world's fastest man.

In all of 9.69 seconds.

Ross


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Beijing 2008: Men 100m race analysis

Bolt's 9.69s. Analysis of speed during the world record. How fast did Bolt run?

Welcome to The Science of Sport! Be sure to visit our main page for daily comment and analysis on cycling, athletics, and more.

Well, yesterday evening we posted on the incredible performance of Usain Bolt, who took the Olympic 100m title in 9.69 seconds, breaking his own world record by 0.03 seconds, despite the fact that he started celebrating about 20m from the finish!

It was a spectacular performance, which you can read about here.

The splits and speeds

However, for today, we have been sent the split times for each 10m interval from Bolt's race (thank you to Seb and an anonymous poster!), which we've used to calculate average speed for each 10m interval. The graph is shown below. Then below that, you'll find a table showing the times at each 10m marker.




Comments

According to these data, his peak speed was hit at 50m, and he then maintained this all the way to 80m, running at about 44 km/hour.

Note that this is the AVERAGE speed - there are reports (which I don't fully believe) that he hit 48km/hour. I can't see where this would have happened, because that would mean that either side of it, he must have run much slower, and the graph above gives no indication that he ran anything but a consistently fast pace. So I think it's far more likely that this figure of about 44km/hour is the speed he hit. The "instantaneous" peak is subject to too much error, unless the data are specifically gathered, which I don't think is the case here.

How does this compare to past values? Well, when Donovan Bailey of Canada ran 9.84 secs to win the 1996 Gold, he was clocked at 43.6 km/hour using a radar gun. A later statistical calculation suggested that Bailey hit 47.6 km/hour, but again, I think this is a little misleading, because the "error" in timing means that 0.5 seconds here or there can swing the "peak speed" by a great deal.

Therefore, I think the better measure is average speed over 10m intervals. I'm quite sure that people have run as fast as Bolt did before. The magic of this performance, however, is not so much in the spectacular top speed between 50m and 80m, but rather that Bolt could maintain his speed for so long.

Remember, a sprinter typically hits peak somewhere between 50 and 60m, but then slows progressively. Bolt's huge victory was created thanks to his incredible 50m stint between 40m and 90m, where he never dropped below 42km/hour.

How much faster can he run?

That is the question flying around today. What if Bolt had not celebrated from 20m out? Could he have run 9.50 seconds? Thompson, who took silver, said he'd run 9.54 seconds. The data above suggest that this is probably a little too optimistic. Even if he had maintained his speed for the final 20m (which is unlikely - he'd probably have dropped off slightly), he would have run 0.09 seconds faster. This would give him a 9.60 second time, which is incredible. More likely, he'd have slowed anyway (as all sprinters do), so I'd guess that his celebrations probably denied him about 0.05s and a time of 9.64s.

However, unless he can find the time somewhere else - in the start perhaps (he was second slowest in reaction time) - he won't run 9.50 seconds. Then again, Bolt is a young man, and he's already shown incredible ability. Who knows what the next two years will bring?

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