We've been talking about Michael Phelps non-stop of late, which is understandable given how amazing his 8 gold medals are. But I've never seen an individual performance like Usain Bolt had tonight (well last night, thanks again NBC) in the 100 meter finals.
Bolt didn't just win and set the world record, he started celebrating with 15 or 20 meters to go and still crushed the competition! My jaw just dropped when he put his hands down and started easing up. He won by 0.2 seconds, which in the 100 meters is an insane amount of time. The announcers tonight were saying that his pre-finish celebration probably cost him 0.1 seconds. Can you imagine what it would have looked like if he had run all the way through to the finish? I don't think there's ever been a race of that caliber that was dominated so thoroughly. Michael Phelps would have had to win the 400 IM by about half the pool to equal what Usain Bolt did tonight.
He said after the race that he didn't care about the time because he already had the world record and just wanted to win the gold medal. Ordinarily I would applaud that sentiment, but tonight I felt gypped. I saw the best 100 meter run ever and the athlete wasn't even trying his hardest!
His attitude makes me wonder if there's more to it than just trying to win the gold medal. Was he playing a psychological game with his opponents, saying "I set the world record without really trying...you'll never beat me."? Was there some financial incentive? Perhaps a sponsor has promised him bonuses every time he breaks the world record and he wanted to leave himself some room to improve. Or the last possibility, the one that I hate to bring up, but is on my (and presumably your) mind every time an athlete does something spectacular now:"Was he cheating?" I'm wondering if he figured that if he'd done a 9.59 he would raise more suspicions about drug use?
I hope I'm wrong. I hope there were no ulterior motives, that he simply was so excited (and confident) that he couldn't hold it in until after the race. But sadly, the state of today's sporting world has caused me to look at everything a little more cynically. So please don't let me down, Michael.
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I sure hope there weren't ulterior motives, even the psychological game you described. If his celebration was pure overflow of joy, that's fine I guess. My take is that it was more of a "look at me" gesture than anything, which if that's the case, would have been a point made with much more of an exclamation point had he absolutely shattered the WR by running through the finish. A run of 9.59 or even in the low 9.6 range would be a record sure to stand for a loooong time down the road.
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