Would Could Usain Bolt's Beijing World Record Have Been?

After the dust had settled from Usain Bolt's stunning performance in the Beijing Olympics, 9.59 seconds appeared as a figure that Usain Bolt's coach, Glen Mills, seemed to miraculously come up with for a calculation of Bolt's potential World Record, had he run all the way through the line. To many track fans however, this seemed slightly strange. Could he really have shaved a full tenth of a second off his time if he hadn't slowed down ever so slightly to enjoy his pinnacle of athletic success? In short: No. According to an article on SpeedEndurance.com by Jimson Lee examining splits through high speed camera footage, Bolt could have run 9.63 or 9.64. I believe that it may be slightly faster than that, but still significantly slower than the magical 9.59 time proposed by his coach.

In his race, Bolt recorded three consecutive 10 meter splits (from the 50m to 80m marks) of .82 seconds, faster than any 10 meter split from any previous 100 meter world record. The closest time before Bolts? A single .83 second split by all 5 of the previous record holders, excluding Asafa Powell who topped out at .84 seconds. From 80-90 meters however Bolt began to tire, as all 100 meter runners do. It is not a race that is won at top speed, but rather is a race of "speed endurance," meaning, the runner than wins is usually the one that can hold their top speed the longest, and lose the least speed at the end of the race. This is where Bolt's splits start to get interesting. From the 80-90 meter mark, Bolt's split was a still extremely respectable .83 seconds. At this point in the race, 8.79 seconds had ticked off the clock. His final 10 meter split however? A pedestrian .90 seconds, a time .05 seconds slower than both Maurice Greene's final 10m in running a then World Record 9.79, and Asafa Powell's final 10m in his previous 9.77 World Record set in '05.

To determine what Bolt should have been able to run, we will take the splits of some of the greatest 100 meter runners preceding Bolt as reference, Carl Lewis, Maurice Green, ***Tim Montgomery***(his inclusion is explained later), and countryman Asafa Powell. It should be noted that Bolt seems to be, given the small body of work that we have to base his 100 meter skills off of, a strong closer. Also, one must take into account the strength that he showed in running to a seemingly untouchable World Record in the 200, showing that he stayed at top speed phenomenally well late in races. The World Records set by Carl Lewis in '88, Maurice Greene in '99, Tim Montgomery (although he used steroids, the data from his races are still usable) in 2002 and finally Asafa Powell's World Record in 2005 all have one thing in common, a very small decrease in splits from the 90 meter mark to the 100 meter mark. Respectively, these athletes only lost .02, .00, .03, .00 seconds in their last 10 meters. These numbers average out to .0125 seconds. Tack this onto Bolt's .83 second split 20 meters before the finish line and we can assume that he would have been able to run no slower than .8425 seconds for his final 10 meters. This gives us a final time of 9.6325 seconds, which would have been electronically rounded down to a breath-taking 9.63 second 100-meter World Record. Given Bolt's impressive closing speed however, it is possible that he may have been able to hang onto another .83 split at the end of his race. This assumption gives us Bolt's fastest possible time at an astonishing 9.62 seconds. A shattered world record, but still .03 seconds behind Coach Mill's calculation.

Bolt's coach seemed to feel that 9.59 was a feasible number for his athlete's 100 meter dash. This however would imply that Bolt would have continued at .82 seconds for another 10 meters, at which point he would have had to drop another hundredth of a second in the last 10 meters of the race, a pattern that was not seen in any of the previous World Record runs. Thusly, 9.59 was an impossible figure for this particular race. Bolt was unable to get out fast enough to make breaking the 9.6 barrier a possibility. That is not to say that he can't though. His reaction time was an unimpressive 0.165 seconds, just over .03 seconds slower than three other athletes in his race. 9.59 certainly isn't without reach, but that is a discussion for another time. Until he can prove us wrong, Bolt's legacy will always be slower than 9.59 seconds over 100 meters.

Citations:
Speed Endurance Article - http://speedendurance.com/2008/08/22/usain-bolt-100m-10-meter-splits-and-speed-endurance/
Olympic 100m Final Results and Reaction Times - http://www.nbcolympics.com/trackandfield/resultsandschedules/rsc=ATM001100/index.html