the bolt 4

Bolt was plagued by injury — a torn hamstring and a strained Achilles tendon — in the build-up to Athens, and was eliminated from the 200 metres in the  preliminary rounds. It was a bitter disappointment and the return home was sobering. In his autobiography, My Story: 9.58, he writes: “I returned to Jamaica deflated and into a wall of criticism from the public, who had been expecting great things. I explained about my injury, but in Jamaica they don’t understand or care about excuses… They were cussing me and looking for other reasons for my failure. The skipped the Commonwealth Games, but finished the season with promising performances at meets in Germany. At that time, the mantle of world’s fastest man was held by another Jamaican, Asafa Powell. At 24, Powell was four years older than Bolt and considerably wealthier; he had banked almost half a million dollars in prize money that season, owned a collection of fine cars and lived in a luxury villa in the hills above Kingston. His talk was that I was going out too much and wasn’t dedicated enough.”

He changed his coach, booked an appointment in Munich with Dr Hans-Wilhelm Müller-Wolfahrt, the renowned sports-injury specialist, and set his sights on Beijing. In 2005, he made the final of the 200 metres at the World Championships in Helsinki but pulled up with a torn hamstring. In 2006 he raced lightly and
face adorned billboards across the city and convinced Bolt that he was in the wrong event.

In July 2007, Bolt persuaded his coach, Glen Mills, to allow him to race the 100 metres at a meeting in Crete. His winning time of 10.03 was impressive — only Powell was running faster in Jamaica — and Mills agreed that he would race the distance again. The following year, they travelled to New York and Bolt ran 9.72 seconds in what was only his fourth 100 metres as a professional athlete. It was a new world record. Three months later, he crushed Powell in the Olympic 100 metres final and broke the record again.