Usain Bolt > Phelps

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May 13, 2002
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#1
What Usain Bolt did was more impressive then what Phelps did, at least to me anyways. What Phelps did was amazing don't get me wrong, but the guy is a genetic freak.



Usain Bolt captured a third gold medal and a third world record after Jamaica claimed men's 4x100m relay gold.

The quartet smashed the previous world mark of 37.40 seconds set by the United States at the 1992 Olympics by a huge margin to set a new benchmark of 37.10.

Nesta Carter ran a strong first leg before passing the baton to Michael Frater, who handed on to Bolt before Asafa Powell brought it home.

Trinidad and Tobago took silver with Japan coming home for bronze.



The run was quicker than the previous record, twice ran by a US team - first in 1992 in Barcelona and also in 1993 in the world championships in Stuttgart.

Bolt has dominated the sprints in Beijing in his breakthrough season capturing the 100m and 200m titles in new world records.

The 22-year-old began his gold rush six days ago by winning the 100m crown in 9.69 seconds before adding the 200m title in 19.30 to beat Michael Johnson's previous world mark.



A third gold followed in the relay and the Jamaican team spirit produced yet another world record.

Bolt, who clocked 9.96 seconds on his leg, told the BBC: "I asked the guys for it and they said 'yes, we're going out there to do it'.

"I'm just happy and grateful because we worked hard for it."

Powell, who lost his 100m world record to team-mate Bolt, was satisfied to come away with a medal after finishing fifth in the sprint final.

"It's a great feeling being out there," said the 25-year-old, who ran hard to the line to make sure he broke the world mark.

"Usain is the world record holder but I was really excited to go out there and get the world record."

Carter added: "It was a great moment. We all wanted it and became victorious. The conditions are good out here so we went for it and got it."

The quartet became the first Jamaican men to capture the Olympic 4x100m title.

Defending champions Great Britain failed to reach the final after anchorman Craig Pickering failed to receive the baton from Marlon Devonish inside the permitted area.

A disastrous handover between Darvis Patton and Tyson Gay also denied the US a place in the final.

 
Aug 9, 2006
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#3
its amazing but not as amazing...athletes are getting freakisly better in this era it seems...i wonder where its going to TOP OUT? as in when a record is NOT going to be broken and never will be....there is a certain point that humans can get to yuh know?


phelps woulda got more medals had the IOC change times and shit....there was some events he could simply not comepte in
 
Sep 29, 2003
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#4
^Any of you guys realize they (the swimmers) are also wearing new wetsuits. I read a few months before the games started they were debating whether or not to ban the wetsuits...Obviously they went along with it, and if you notice new world records were set in just about every race...
 

Joey

Sicc OG
Jul 2, 2002
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#6
@2-0, that race you have on your post is crazy......He starts off kinda slow then just blows them away.......WOW..
 
May 13, 2002
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#7
@2-0, that race you have on your post is crazy......He starts off kinda slow then just blows them away.......WOW..
yeah and he actually slows down at the end too, which is crazy considering his time was a world record. Could have been even a tad bit better if he went 100%.

@MaKaVeLi_420, not only that but the pools they built were specifically designed for the olympics. Something about how deep the pool is causes swimmers to go faster....here's a quote:

The pool in Beijing's Water Cube is one of the world's fastest. Its 3-meter depth is the deepest allowable, and it is 10 lanes wide (even though Olympic events are run with eight swimmers to a heat). These features reduce speed-robbing turbulence. But how much of a difference did those tweaks actually make this year? At last month's Olympic trials in a more conventional, 2.5-meter-deep pool in Omaha, Neb., Phelps posted a time of 1:44:10 in the 200 meters. His Olympic world-record time was 1:42.96—about a second faster.​
 
Aug 9, 2006
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#15
the pools would make everyone faster right? why try to take away what phelps got? because hes whitey or what?

just because he got swim suits and fast pools doesnt take away anything IMO....he still got more gold medals then ANYONE
 
May 13, 2002
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#17
The man is insane, another record. A living legend by the age of 22, 5 world records broken in 12 months

The Jamaican sprinting great captured the 200-meter gold medal in 19.19 seconds Thursday, yet another world record.




His time in the 200 slashed 0.11 seconds off the mark he set last year at the Beijing Olympics and came four days after he broke his 100 record by the same margin.

"I am on my way to being a legend," said Bolt, who gritted his teeth and pointed to the clock as soon as his time flashed.

No one among the near capacity crowd at the 70,000-seat Olympic Stadium disagreed.

"If Queen Elizabeth knighthooded me and I would get the title Sir Usain Bolt, that would be very nice," Bolt said.

Bolt is now 5 for 5 in major sprint events. He won the gold in the 100, 200 and sprint relay in Beijing's Bird Nest, each time with a world record. Now he is one race away from doing likewise in Berlin.

"I was running my heart out," Bolt said. "I got my start right and that was the key."

Alonso Edward of Panama was second, a distant 0.62 seconds behind Bolt. Wallace Spearmon of the United States took bronze.

"Just coming out there, I'm just waiting for the lights to flash 'game over,' 'cause I felt like I was in a video game," said Shawn Crawford, who finished fourth. "That guy was moving — fast."

Bolt's spirits got a boost before the start when teammate Melaine Walker added the world title to her Olympic gold in the women's 400 hurdles, another success for the Caribbean island with outsized performances at the championships.

After defending champion Tyson Gay had withdrawn because of injury, Bolt's main competitor stood beyond the finish line — a huge track clock painted in the same colors as his Jamaican jersey.

With a new take on President Kennedy's famous Cold War quote "Ich bin ein Berliner," Bolt pleased the locals with a training jersey saying "Ich bin ein Berlino," referring to the bear mascot of the championships.

His running was even better than his show. From Lane 5, he gobbled up all opposition by the end of the curve, and then let loose those huge arms and legs in a whirl of unmatched speed.

Once across the line, he stuck out his tongue much in the manner of basketball great Michael Jordan.

Bolt took off his orange shoes, which had taken him though through eight races in six days, and he started celebrating on the eve of his 23rd birthday.

It was the first sultry evening in Berlin, with temperatures exceeding 90 degrees, reminiscent of the warm night, exactly one year ago, in Beijing.

"I definitely showed people that my world records in Beijing were not a joke," Bolt said.

During warmups, Bolt faked knocking out Spearmon, with the American happily playing along, taken in by the Bolt aura.

The decathlon was won by American Trey Hardee, taking over from injured teammate Bryan Clay.

Despite a slow closing 1,500 meters, Hardee held on for gold, edging Leonel Suarez of Cuba.

Earlier, Yusuf Saad Kamel of Bahrain and Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia started their chase for their own doubles. After winning the 10,000 on Monday, Bekele was dominant again and crossed first in his heat of the 5,000.

The Ethiopian great won a long-distance double at the Beijing Olympics. Two golds in Berlin would establish him as perhaps Africa's greatest distance runner.

Competing on two hours sleep, Kamel followed his victory in the 1,500 late Wednesday with a win and easy qualification for the semifinals in the 800.

"I did not sleep last night because I was very excited," said the Kenyan-born Bahraini, the son of two-time 800 world champion Billy Konchellah.

Favorites Yuriy Borzakovskiy of Russia and Abubakere Kaki of Sudan qualified alongside him.

Olympic hurdles champion Dayron Robles had a bad day. The world-record holder had been slowed by a hamstring injury the past few weeks and after hitting the first three hurdles in his semifinal, he cried out in agony, grabbed his leg and slowed to a stop. He had to be helped off the track, leaving the final late Thursday wide open.

In the men's pole vault, another Olympic champion was in trouble. Steve Hooker made it to Saturday's final on a bad leg with his only jump of 18 feet, 6 1/2 inches, but was unsure whether he could continue.

"I am not sure about my appearance in the final," Hooker said. "It is just that I am not healthy."

Defending champion Brad Walker of the United States pulled out of the event before qualifying with a pelvic injury.

A day after winning her first 800 world title amid a gender-test controversy, 18-year-old Caster Semenya was unruffled by the dispute when she accepted gold medal on the podium, grinning and singing along with the South African anthem.

Her stunning improvement in times, muscular build and deep voice have raised questions if she is indeed competing as a woman.

"She said to me she doesn't see what the big deal is all about," South Africa team manager Phiwe Mlangeni-Tsholetsane said. "She believes it is God given talent and she will exercise it."

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
 
May 13, 2002
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#19
From Monday:

Usain Bolt celebrates winning the 100m final of the World Championships in a new world record time of 9.58 secs. Photograph: Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters




* Sport
* Usain Bolt

From man to superman ... Usain Bolt raises the pace of change

• Bolt's 100m record is 20 years early, experts say
• Giant sprinter may be harbinger of future greats

*
Comments (…)
* Buzz up!
* Digg it

* Owen Gibson, sports news correspondent
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 17 August 2009 21.27 BST

Usain Bolt

Usain Bolt celebrates winning the 100m final of the World Championships in a new world record time of 9.58 secs. Photograph: Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters

Seventeen years passed between Carl Lewis running the 100m in 9.86 seconds in 1991 and Usain Bolt going .14sec faster in May 2008, but the Jamaican sprinter's jaw–dropping performance on Sunday night has now reduced the record by a similar amount in just 15 months.

Bolt's performances at last year's Beijing Olympics had statisticians reaching for their calculators after his time of 9.69sec blew to pieces a model that had predicted with reasonable accuracy the progress of ever faster times in the 100m for nearly 100 years. Under that model, no one was due to run as fast as Bolt until 2030.

Following his latest world record breaking performance – 9.58 in Berlin's World Championships this week, achieved despite a car accident and after claiming to be just 85% fit – they might as well throw the model away altogether.

It was the biggest reduction in the record since electronic timing was introduced in 1968, when Jim Hines ran 9.95 at 1968 Mexico City Olympics and it took 28 years for Donovan Bailey to shave another .11 seconds from the record.

Further back, there had been a 20 year gap between Jesse Owens running the 100m in 10.2 in 1936, and William Williams shaving off a tenth of a second. In the same stadium as Owens' 1936 victory, Bolt clocked an average 44.72 km/hour between 60m and 80m.

Academics hailed his rare combination of stature, speed and power as a "one off" that may never be repeated. Just 12 months since Bolt, in his words, "blew the world's mind" in Beijing, he has again redefined the debate about how fast human beings will be able to run.

Dr Richard Ferguson, a senior lecturer in exercise physiology at Loughborough University, said Bolt's 6' 5" frame was the key to his success, allowing him to cover the 100m in between 40 and 41 strides when his competitors take 45 to 48.

"He's a good five to six inches taller than his competitors," he said. "His muscles will be slightly longer. If you have longer legs then you have longer muscles, which can generate more speed and more velocity." Taller athletes have historically been considered less suited to short sprints because they have fewer of the "fast twitch" muscle fibres that provide explosive speed, and find it harder to achieve a fast start out of the blocks. But Bolt has upset conventional coaching wisdom.

Ferguson said it was hard to separate physiological reasons from advances in nutrition, technology and training when attempting to explain why sprinters had got so much faster, so much more quickly, in recent years.

"It could be that he has a few more of those fast twitch muscles, but it's unlikely that he would have so many more than Tyson Gay, for example," he said. "He's tall but he's powerful too. He's something of a one off. I don't think we'll see anyone like him for a very long time."

Research showing athletes were getting taller and heavier faster than the rest of the population also suggested Bolt's height was a key factor.

In a paper published in the Journal of Experimental Biology last month, Adrian Bejan, professor of mechanical engineering at Duke University in the US, showed that elite sprinters had grown by 6.4 inches over the last century, while the population as a whole had grown 2 inches. Bolt is 11 inches taller than Eddie Tolan, the record holder in 1929.

Bolt has the hopes of an entire sport resting on his shoulders. Yet if he's feeling the pressure, he's hiding it well. The International Olympic Committee president, Jacques Rogge, said last week that TV ratings for the Beijing games showed younger people returning to the sport.

But athletics' world governing body, the IAAF, the organiser of this week's championships, recognises there is a big job to do to re-engage a global audience. Bolt will be a key asset when it launches the Diamond League series of domestic meetings next year, an athletics "Champions League" designed to give more coherence to the sport outside major championships.

As for how much faster Bolt can go, experts have given up trying to answer. His coach, Glen Mills, predicted after the Olympics that he could run 9.54 and was almost proved right. On Sunday night, Bolt commented: "I said anything could happen and it did. I'm happy with myself. Now I plan to do even better." 9.4 was the next goal, he said. Attention will now turn to whether Bolt can repeat his Beijing achievement and triumph in the 200m as well, the heats for which begin on Tuesday . "It's going to be fun," he said.
 
Jan 18, 2006
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#20
that would be dope if he played wide receiver, cornerbacks would have to give him like 10 to 15 yard cushion every down.