Bolt void in the 200m still not filled

When Usain Bolt retired from the 200 metres after the 2016 Olympics, he left a void that hasn’t yet been filled. His stunning world record – 19.19 seconds – turns 10 years old this week and since 2011, no one has come remotely close.

His 100-metre world record – 9.58 seconds – represented a master class in sprinting with a great start, unparalleled acceleration and astonishing top speed maintenance, combining to produce a run for the ages. A few days later in the same Berlin Olympic Stadium, Bolt grimaced and fought his fatigue in the last 50 metres. Trinidad and Tobago’s 1997 World 200 champion Ato Boldon observed recently, “That race could have been 19.10, 19.11.”

Nevertheless, the Glen Mills-coached phenomenon battled his way to an 0.11 second reduction of the mark he set en route to the 2008 Olympic title – 19.30 seconds.

The first half of this record run had been tremendous. Thought to be too tall at 6’ 5” to run the curve well, Bolt covered the first 100m in 9.92 seconds. Only Jamaica, the USA, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, The Bahamas, Canada, China, Namibia, Nigeria, France, Great Britain, Holland, Portugal, Qatar, Trinidad and Tobago and Zimbabwe have national 100-metre records that are faster. Mills made Bolt a master of running the curve.

Happy exclamation

Two Jamaican journalists met giddy Berliners on the way to their hotel after Bolt’s super race. Seemingly primed with the best German beer, the celebrants greeted the travelling scribes with the happy exclamation, ‘1919’.

Even now, it’s still stunning.

In 2011, Bolt’s Racers Track Club training partner Yohan Blake came close with a brilliant run in Brussels, Belgium. Blake, by then World champion in the 100m, blasted home in 19.26 seconds. Sadly, injuries robbed him of the three seasons that followed his 19.44 – 19.32 loss to Bolt in the 2012 Olympic final.

A measure of a record is how long it lasts. Another is how often it is challenged. Bolt’s 19.19 has only been threatened once, and no one has run under 19.5 since 2012.

Boldon says Bolt’s records have changed the way we look at sprinting.

“In our generation, if you ran under 20 seconds, it was a big deal,” he recorded. In reference to Michael Johnson’s world-record Olympic win in 1996, he said, “when Michael ran 19.32, it changed everything.”

Bolt ran faster than that, twice.

The tall Jamaican retired from the 200m after the 2016 Olympics and one of the men from the world record race, Ramil Guliyev, Turkey’s 2017 World 200-metre champion, said Bolt’s departure left an evenly matched group of sprinters battling for supremacy in the 200 metres.

“Now that Bolt has gone, there is no obvious successor, and there are maybe 15 of us at a similar standard,” added the Turk in a 2017 interview.

European title

Seventh in Berlin, Guliyev edged 400-metre record holder Wayne van Niekerk to win the 200 metres at the World Championships and added the European title in 2018.

Since then, young American Noah Lyles has stepped out of the group described by Guliyev. Defeated just once in the 200m in two years, Lyles is the fastest man over the distance in both 2018, at 19.65 seconds and 19.50 seconds this year, and could improve.

That’s the view of expert Jamaican coach Maurice Wilson.

“Obviously, he’s one of those rare talents, maybe not the quality of a Bolt, but one of those rare talents; and that fact that he has run 9.8 speaks to his speed,” said Wilson.

Noting that the 22-year-old Lyles is coached by Lance Brauman, who tutored Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell-Brown to two Olympic 200m titles and the 2017 World 100-metre gold medal, the Sprintec Track Club founder advanced, “So with that speed, with the type of coach he has, there’s no surprise here, but the scary thing about it, I think he can go faster.”

Asked if the sprinters running today can one day challenge the world records, Boldon was cautious.

“It’s more likely to take somebody like Noah, who, if you think about it, Noah Lyles could be a quarter-miler,” he said of the prospect, whose father Kevin was a 400-metre runner in college. “When you look at him, everything says 400,” Boldon added.

“It has to be somebody who can run 1, 2 and 4 like Bolt,” he said in referenced to Bolt’s personal best of 45.28 seconds in the one-lap sprint.

For the time being, the all-time world 200-metre performance list reads Bolt 19.19, Blake 19.26, Bolt 19.30, Johnson 19.32, Bolt 19.32, Blake 19.44 and Lyles 19.50. If you believe the experts, it doesn’t look like the world record accountants will need correcting fluid anytime soon.