Usain Bolt and the greatest 10 seconds in sports – Yahoo Sports

“I came to this Olympics to win three gold medals,” Bolt said. “I came to put myself again as one of the greats. And that’s my focus. So if, by any chance, I fail, I’m going to feel sad. Of course I’m not going to feel accomplished.”

Sprinting is not a sport conducive to longevity. Training sessions are brutal. Muscles tear. Ligaments snap. Tendons rip. Explosive movement defines great sprinters, and it limits their lifespans. For Bolt to compete in three Olympics, this one at 29 years old, is plenty. For him to consider anything less than a triple-triple a failure would feel crazy if it didn’t feel even more like an inevitability.

4.0 seconds

This is when Usain Bolt becomes Usain Bolt.

The typical sprinter takes somewhere between 44 and 48 strides over 100 meters. Bolt takes 40 or 41. At 6-foot-5, he is the tallest elite sprinter the world ever has seen. The other seven racers in the 100 stood 6-foot-2, 6-1, 5-11, 5-11, 5-9, 5-9 and 5-8. Bolt is simply a freak, somehow able to balance the length and power of his stride.

[RELATED: Bolt predicted van Niekerk would break 400 world record]

Four seconds into the race, Bolt’s legs churned, his posture more upright than the others, gaining, moving in, on the hunt. He passed some. His was primed to pass others. The fans recognized this. They weren’t looking at anyone else.

5.0 seconds

Five hours before the 100 started, a horn at Olympic Stadium sounded and a clock began ticking backward. On the scoreboard at both ends read a message in all capital letters: COUNTDOWN TO THE EVENT.

Usain Bolt races aren’t races. They are events, shows, entertainment distilled to its essence, food for the 50,000 here and billion or so worldwide. It’s impossible to overstate how much people love Bolt. Next to Michael Jordan, he is the world’s most beloved athlete. His shoes don’t sell by the millions. He doesn’t play a signature sport. He runs but a few times a year, if that. And still, every time he does race, the crowd devolves into full-on, throaty madness, cacophonous from gun to finish line, which was less than five seconds away.

Another clock was ticking on Usain Bolt.

6.0 seconds

The most iconic moment Sunday actually came in Bolt’s semifinal race. At the 5.5-second mark, he looked right and saw nobody. At 6.7 seconds, he looked left, to the young Canadian Andre De Grasse, who was in second. Getty photographer Cameron Spencer took the perfect picture. All of the field was straining, blurry, behind. And Usain Bolt was smiling, like a man who knew exactly what he was going to do later that night.

7.0 seconds

This is where he wins. In a 100-meter race, in less than 10 seconds, someone shouldn’t be capable of making up so much room so fast. To see Usain Bolt run, though, is to see a man defy what we’ve long believed possible and turn it into something we can’t believe is happening.

Gone were Trayvon Bromell and Jimmy Vicaut, Ben Youssef Meite and Akani Simbine, Yohan Blake and Andre De Grasse. And the last man he passed was Justin Gatlin, who, like so many times before, had no answer for the fastest man ever.

8.0 seconds

He was hurt. That’s the funny thing about Usain Bolt. There’s always that tiny seedling of doubt amid the resplendent crops of evidence otherwise that maybe this time around he won’t do it – that the start will be too slow, the stride off just a bit, the legs incapable of agitating in the perfect manner that propels him so.

This time it was the hamstring injury that kept him out of his country’s Olympic trials. Bolt received a medical exemption from Jamaica that allowed him to run, and he looked healthy enough in the qualifying heats, but still. Hamstrings are finicky. One bad step, one awkward landing, and it’s over, that easy.

Eight men stepped to the line at 10:25 p.m. local time Saturday. Seven of them understood the only way they would know 100-meter gold was by the grace a hamstring that needed to hold on for just two more seconds.

9.0 seconds

He slowed down a bit. Usain Bolt does this toward the finish line, almost by force of habit. He knew he wasn’t going to break his own 100-meter record of 9.58 seconds. He was too tired for that, his legs jellied by only 75 minutes of downtime between the semifinals and finals.

“It did affect me a little bit,” Bolt said. “My legs felt a little dead at the start.”

By now, they were resurrected, ready for the inexorable conclusion allowed by his hamstring and his training and his balance and his natural gifts and everything that makes Usain Bolt such a force of nature when his feet hit a race track.

9.81 seconds

“This is what I came here for,” Usain Bolt said, about two hours after he won the seventh Olympic gold medal of his career, after he was serenaded by a stadium chanting his name, after he was stopped by a woman who snapped a selfie with him and danced as he walked away and, as a thank you, giddily chirped: “I love you!” After he finished .08 seconds ahead of the silver medalist Gatlin and .10 seconds ahead of the bronze medalist De Grasse. After he continued a 100-meter dash winning streak that dates to 2011, when he disqualified himself with a false start at the world championships.

After plucking the seedling from the ground before it had a chance to sprout into anything.

“At the end of the day, may the best man win,” Gatlin said. “And today Usain was the best man.”

Not today. Every day.

10 seconds

This is why Usain Bolt needs the Rio Games. Because as others crossed the finish line in 9.93 and 9.94 and 9.96 and 10.04 and 10.06, the margin between first and last a quarter of a second, less than an eye blink, he was holding up his right index finger to remind the world what he was, just in case four years had caused any amnesia.

After his triple at the London Games, Bolt declared himself a legend. He already was, and he still is, and he will continue to be, even if he doesn’t complete the triple-triple. Should he, Bolt said, “I can become immortal. Two more medals to go and I can sign off. Immortal.”

The greatest 10 seconds in sports started with a blur and ended with a flourish, and everything in between was the amalgamation of energy and vibe and biomechanics and hard work and talent and all that makes Usain Bolt as amazing as he ever was, as amazing as we’ve ever seen.

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