Reuters
Usain Bolt. [Source: Reuters]
Usain Bolt, whose 9.58 seconds world record for the 100 metres is now 16 years old, says he could have run 9.42 in the carbon-plated “super-spikes” that today’s sprinters are racing in.
The Jamaican set his mark at the 2009 world championships in Berlin, breaking his own 9.69 record from the previous year’s Beijing Olympics, and it has now stood for longer than the 14 years of Jim Hines’s 9.95 set at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.
Research by Puma, the company that shod him through his glorious era of dominance, predicted that Bolt would run 9.42 in today’s shoes and, speaking at an event ahead of the world championships in Tokyo, he said: “I fully agree.”
Bolt’s compatriot Kishane Thompson ran 9.75 at the Jamaican championships in June – the fastest time by anyone for 10 years to make him the sixth-fastest of all time – but Bolt said he was not worried about anyone breaking his record anytime soon.
Bolt retired in 2017 with six Olympic and seven world individual 100m and 200m golds, and no Jamaican man has won a global sprint title since his Rio Olympic double in 2016.
Thompson came within five thousandths of a second of ending the drought when he was pipped on the line by Noah Lyles in last year’s Olympic 100m final and Bolt says he, or compatriot Oblique Seville, could go one better in Sunday’s 100 metres.
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