The clock finally caught up with Usain Bolt at the Olympic Stadium last night. Just two weeks short of his 31st birthday, the 11 times world champion, who had so often mocked the stopwatch, was unable to stem the tide of time. In his last 100m before he heads into retirement, Bolt was not just beaten, he was beaten by his old nemesis, Justin Gatlin, who seems to inhabit his own time capsule.
Gatlin is more than four years Bolt’s senior but has twice been banned for doping. The American has been jeered every step of the way at these world championships and his reception was equally hostile last night. At the line, there was a stunned silence as the crowd willed the scoreboard to anoint Bolt one last time or if not the champion, then his natural successor, Christian Coleman. But Coleman was also just beaten by the fast-finishing Gatlin, who had beaten Bolt only once in their previous nine races.
Bolt was feted as if he had won all round his final lap of honour, but the bounce had gone along with the broad smile. This was not the end he had anticipated. To be beaten by a 21-year-old university student was one thing; to be beaten by Gatlin was a humiliation. “It’s been wonderful,” the eight times Olympic champion told the crowd. “I never expected this. For you all to come out and support me, I really appreciate this. I’m very sorry it ended this way.
“I came here to win but I wasn’t able to do so. It is just one of those things. It’s my start — it is killing me. I just can’t get off the blocks. I came out here to do my best. The support has been outstanding — I have never experienced anything like it anywherte else in the world.”
Gatlin’s lap of honour went almost unnoticed as the crowd celebrated the farewell and the demise of a great champion, but the American said: “I block out the crowd. I came here to do a job. If people want to cheer for me that’s fine. This is a real huge moment for me. I have had so many losses against Usain so this is special for me. We are rivals on the track but he came up to me at the end and told me that I didn’t deserve the boos. He congratulated me on beating him and winning my gold medal.”
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Bolt emerged onto the track to a tumultuous welcome less than two hours after losing his semi-final to Coleman, a student from the University of Tennessee. Throughout the opening rounds, Coleman, a throwback to the old days of the muscular American sprinter, had looked his likely successor. But it was asking a lot of the young American to end a prolific breakthrough season with the biggest victory of his life.
The atmosphere was no less tense and electric than on the night nearly five years before when Bolt had run 9.63seconds to take the gold, with Yohan Blake and Gatlin in his wake. Bolt’s legs will no longer propel him to such times but his competitive instinct and his command of the stage remain fully intact.
Even for the Jamaican, who has absorbed and deflected more pressure than any athlete in the world over the past decade, the stakes were high. It has been clear through the winter and into the season that both the motivation and the energy were starting to fade and time was starting to run out on hiss body. All he needed was one last hurrah, back in the stadium which had helped to frame his genius and in front of a crowd who had never seen him lose.
The multiple world champion laboured to victory in his heat on Friday night, but if the showman’s instinct was still intact, the athlete’s swagger was not. He looked nervous and unusually ill at ease, blaming his blocks for the poor starand talking of ‘making the finals and doing my best’.
Though he suffered a rare defeat after another lacklustre start in his semi-final, Bolt closed down Coleman in the last 20m as both men slowed near the line. The glance across from champion to pretender, part respect, part challenge, seemed to signal a restoration of order, as did Bolt’s time of 9.98sec into a headwind. He came into London with only one sub-10 second run to his name this season, in Monaco a fortnight ago, and as the joint seventh fastest man in the field in 2017 alongside America’s Justin Gatlin and Thando Roto of South Africa.
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Never a great starter, he has had to rely more and more on his mid-race speed to maintain his extraordinary record of victories at Olympics and world championships. The 100m in Daegu when he was disqualified for a false start was the only blemish on his clean sweep of individual gold medals at 100m and 200m since the Olympics in Beijing nine years ago.
The absence of Canada’s Andre de Grasse, a double Olympic medallist, because of a hamstring tear, had immeasurably eased the pressure on him. Coleman’s 9.82sec in that semi-final, incidentally, had already made him the fourth fastest ever American, behind Tyson Gay, Gatlin and Maurice Green.
Bolt will leave athletics, to the satisfaction of his ego, as an icon in the sport. But statistics alone tell only a fraction of the story. No one has provided so many indelible images along the way, from his astounding entrance at Beijing in 2008 through to the twin world records in Berlin a year later and sprint doubles in London and Rio, all treading the border between sport and theatre. Bolt has been an incomparable athlete, but an incomparable showman too and athletics will be far quieter and much the less appealing without him. Having given so much enjoyment to others, it is time for sport’s master of ceremonies to enjoy himself.
MEN’S 100M FINAL
1 J Gatlin (US) 9.92s
2 C Coleman (US) 9.94
3 U Bolt (Jam) 9.96
4 Y Blake (Jam) 9.99
5 A Simbine (SA) 10.01
6 J Vicaut (Fra) 10.08
7 R Prescod (GB) 10.17
8 B Su (Chi) 10.27
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Coleman joins a very exclusive club
Before last night only five men had beaten Bolt in a competitive 100m. Last night Gatlin did it again and Coleman joined the club
Jul 2008, Stockholm, Super Grand Prix
Asafa Powell ran 9.88, Bolt ran 9.89
Aug 2009, Berlin, world championships heats
Daniel Bailey 10.02, Bolt 10.03
Aug 2010, Stockholm, Diamond League
Tyson Gay 9.84, Bolt 9.97
Jun 2012, Kingston, Jamaica national trials
Yohan Blake 9.75, Bolt 9.86
Jun 2013, Rome, Diamond League
Justin Gatlin 9.94, Bolt 9.95
Aug 2017, London, world championships semi-finals
Christian Coleman 9.97, Bolt 9.98
Aug 2017, London, world championships final
Justin Gatlin 9.92s, Coleman 9.94, Bolt 9.95