Usain Bolt Says His 9.58s 100 Metre Record Will Be Broken Last
Track and field legend, now A-Team Dancehall music producer Usain Bolt, says he believes his 9.58 seconds 100-metre world record will be the last of the two set in 2009 to be broken.
“I think the hundred is going to be harder because its quicker, and if you make a mistake during the race, you are not gonna get it. So it’s a lot more technical; so I believe the hundred metres is gonna go last,” the Trelawny native told World Athletics in a recent interview.
When asked whether he thinks his 100-metre race at the IAAF World Championships in Berlin, Germany, where he smashed his own world record lowering it from 9.69 seconds to 9.58, was the perfect race, the sprint kingpin said in his mind initially he thought it was the perfect race, until his coach Glen Mills, told him that it was definitely not.
“I would say so. My coach would never. We have talked about this and I was like ‘this is the perfect race’ and he said ‘no it’s not’. He is very technical so he sat down and break the race down and explained to me why it’s not. And one of the main things he said to me – and it’s true – I kept on looking around all the time. And he said ‘you can’t. You could have gone faster if you had just focussed on getting to the line’” Bolt recounted.
Mills, whose career as an athletics coach spans five decades, has, apart from Bolt, been responsible for the development of some of Jamaica’s greatest sprinters, among them Raymond Stewart and Yohan Blake.
Usain Bolt’s time of 9.58 seconds had seen him reach what the Olympics described as an astonishing 44.72km/h when he hit full stride in the 100m final of the Berlin 2009 World Athletics Championships. But even though the Olympics and numerous track and field pundits revere the race as the most glorious, the William Knibb Memorial High School old boy said he had to agree with Mills, who is one of the greatest sprint coaches ever, that the race had flaws.
“It’s true. In my mind it was perfect. In my coach’s it wasn’t,” he said.
About his years in track and field, Bolt added: “My main aim was to dominate throughout the years and that’s what I did, every year. I think every season I was on point. I was working hard, and I was dominating so for me it was perfect.”
The 100m has long been revered as the ‘acid test’ for the world’s finest sprinters, and the holder of the men’s world record is usually bestowed with the title of the ‘World’s Fastest Man’.
According to Olympics.com, “since 1987, the men’s 100m world record has never stood for more than three years and three months. Until, that is, Jamaican legend Usain Bolt, set the current world record in August 2009”.
“No other sprinter has broken the 9.60 second barrier, with Bolt registering 9.63 seconds at London 2012 and Tyson Gay and Yohan both hitting 9.69 seconds set in 2009 and 2012 respectively,” Olympics.com noted.
The first 100-metre world record to be ratified by the IAAF was recorded 111 years ago in 1912 when Donald Lippincott of the United States ran 10.6 seconds in the qualifying round of the Summer Olympics.
As for Jamaica, between the years 1989 and 2023, along with Bolt, a total of 30 male athletes competing for the island have run the 100 meters in under 10 seconds, the first being Raymond Stewart, who was coached by Mills himself.
Mills also has the distinction of coaching Yohan Blake to become the youngest man to win a 100m world title in 2011. He also coached Warren Weir, the 2012 Olympic 200m bronze medalist.
Where Raymond Stewart is concerned, Mills coached him to the Olympic 100 metres final at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, fresh out of Camperdown High School.
Mills, at present, is the coach of young sprinter Oblique Seville, who was fourth in the 100 metre finals in 2022 and 2023.