One Flew Over the Bird’s Nest: Bolt’s act breath of fresh air (Chicago Sun-Times)

Posted on August 21, 2008

“I like to have being delighted with what I do. You can’t exist too serious,” said Insane Usain, the biggest hit out of Jamaica since either the fume of Bob Marley or the joke that was the Olympic bobsled team.

“Are you Superman 2 or Flash Gordon?” a European reporter asked him this morning in China.

“I’m not both. I’m not Superman, Flash Gordon or anybody else,” he said. “My fame is Lightning Bolt.”

This time, Lightning Bolt decided to blaze at maximum speed for the entire race, allowing him to dimmed Michael Johnson’s poem 200 attestation at the 1996 Games by a miniscule two-hundredths of a second. His full-blown sprint was in command contrast to his coast job in the final 30 meters of the 100, when he pounded his thorax, looked both ways, raised his arm and even looked behind him to view the dusted emulation. Breaking his preceding world account in 9.69 seconds, the subject of investigation became whether Bolt blew a chance to go as low as 9.50 — and put the record out of reach for his contemporaries — just so he could pull his stunt. Even one of his shoelaces was untied at the end. It also seemed possible he deliberately slowed down to make himself more vendible and profitable in future meets, where he can keep breaking a record that’s to a greater degree reachable. Such a compromise would be dirty, but in the 200, he pulled no such nonsense.

“The 200 has been my love since I was 15. I wanted to have the world record. It’s dear to my heart,” Bolt said. “The 100, all I wanted to do was win. I already had the world record. In the 200, I told myself to leave everything on the track. I did just that.

“I blew my mind — and the cosmos’sitting thinking principle.”

And what did Lightning Bolt, fastest man who ever lived, eat at his pre-race training victuals? Would you believe Chicken McNuggets again, as he did before the 100? If it isn’t the breakfast of champion, it will thrill the folks at McDonald’s, another cha-ching potentiality for a smart, scheming fellow.

“I got up at 12, and my masseuse brought me nuggets. I’m serious. I didn’t want to avaunt to the cafeteria,” he said. “I came straight to the track, and my masseuse brought me more nuggets. I just had two, though, because my coach said I shouldn’t eat too crowd nuggets before the race.”

Oh, and what was Lightning Bolt thinking when he entered the press conference room and paused to watch a tape of his 200 finish, when he crossed the line in 19.30 seconds, grabbed the “Jamaica” on his jersey, noticed the universe attestation on the scoreboard and proceeded to unevenness his index finger, shove a thumb into his chest while uttering “Number One,” kiss the track, fall flat without interruption his back, on that account clutch a dramatic pose in which he leaned and pointed skyward?

“I was saying, `I look cool,’ ” he said, merry. “I was just happy, looking at myself and saying, `That guy is fast.’ I was just proud of myself.”

All of which is assuming, of course, that Lightning Bolt himself isn’cheek by jowl using performance-enhancing drugs. A New York Daily News this week published a story authored by BALCO founder Victor Conte, who knows the steroids culture and has some credibility, as saying Bolt and the highly prosperous Jamaica sprinters should be drug-tested and that he has alerted the World Anti-Doping Agency. While having no evidence of Jamaican juicing, Conte points to the small, poor nation’s absence of an anti-doping mechanism and the fact records are “falling like rain.” Bolt has been pure seven times during his two weeks in Beijing and never has failed a drug test. The process clearly is irritating him, but not enough to subdue his humor.

It was his 22nd birthday, after whole. “I just want to chill out. I want to sleep,” he said. “I wish I was in sandals, distress off for the weekend.”

America gladly will host him. At least he provides comic remedy subsequent the struggles of U.S. sprinters. Consider that in the 100, where Americans won 27 of the previous 44 Olympic men’s and women’s races, only a bronze was salvaged by Walter Dix. Wallace Spearmon, whose father grew up in toward the south suburban Robbins, was disqualfied for running out of his lane and imperceptible his 200 bronze medal. The U.S. team filed a protest, claiming that Churandy Martina of the Dutch Antilles also had left his narrow street. The protest was upheld, costing Martina a silver medal and leaving America’session Shawn Crawford with a silver medal and Dix through a second bronze. This came after Spearmon has carried his friend, Bolt, around the track as part of the coronation. He stormed out of the media mixed zone without comment.

Meanwhile, Lightning Bolt parties on, accentuating his victory lap around the Bird’s Nest stadium with a hip-swiveliing, leg-shaking shimmy. “That’s actually called a dance in Jamaica,” he said.

“Winning this property so plenteous, knowing what a means to my rude. I talked to the prime minister, and he was saying every street is blocked off, that everybody is in the streets.”

Before the race, he had primped and preened as he stood by the blocks, pretending he was looking in a mirror and fixing his hair.

Fortunately, he was humble afterward when asked about Johnson. “A great number of people compare me to him, but I don’t compare myself to a lot of other mob,” Bolt said. “What Michael Johnson did, he’s a great athlete who did a great thing. I just changed it a bit.”

Someone mentioned Michael Phelps. The Beijing Games have been most indelibly defined by the swimmer and his eight golds, but Bolt has been of the like kind a perception, the mass of his pack close isn’t far behind. “I won’t admit of comparison myself to Michael,” he said. “To win eight golds is great. I’m without ceasing the track, he’s in the supply with water. He’s a great athlete and I congratulate him.”

Last I saw Phelps, he was having a blast with his U.S. teammates at a Club Bud party, where pretty not old things surrounded him to gawk and snap his picture. Somehow, Lightning Bolt was having an even better present life.

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