Gay, Powell, and Collins on the London startlist

wtfunny--

BJ didn't get to show everything he could have had, but although I don't think he ever could have gone 9.55, he may well have gone 9.70, which would be respectable in a race where the winner goes 9.55

Regarding Bolt's 10.07, I include it as a demonstration of his not-specifically-100m-trained capability, as a demonstration of what he could do in the 100m, using only 200m training.

Over half a second is the difference in the 100m between a 200m-trained Bolt and a 100m-trained Bolt, with only one year of training. Sorry if it was unclear. The only max it represented was his max in that year, with only 200m training.

And yes, we know Bolt was an outlier as a junior--but as we all know, that isn't determinative of whether or not he will be an outlier as a senior. People develop at different rates. There are plenty of examples of people who develop quickly as juniors, yet who are not outliers as seniors.

And as for using his 200m times, well, that is assuming what you set out to prove.

You are correct, IMO, that Blake is the big question, that 19.26 sticks out like a sore thumb--especially when you consider that his RT was a laughable .269, which is easily .10 slower than it should have been, hence the run itself was the WR run, and would have been a 19.16 if he hadn't fallen asleep in the blocks.

Given that, as I said, I think it is credible evidence that Bolt was using, otherwise Blake would have been caught--either through the usual testing, or through a snitch, or both. The fact that he hasn't been caught suggests to me that there would be a large price to be paid for ratting him out, and the only price I can think of that would be big enough would be that he has the dirt on Bolt.

Bolt is immensely popular around the world--everybody likes him, he is a brand, he is the face of t&f. Blake is not, and even if Blake wins in the Games, what are the chances that he dethrones Bolt in the popularity and fame department? Zero, IMHO. There wouldn't be much to be gained by harboring Blake, unless he had something on Bolt, or unless the powers that be want to drum up some excitement in the marquee event, which is certainly a possibility--but if that were the case, then they could let all the top guys skate, as a doped Powell, Gay, or Gatlin would be every bit the equal of a doped Blake.

Also, I think the powers-that-be know that a doped Bolt will beat a doped Blake, and I think that Bolt knows that, too (unless Blake goes seriously overboard), and I think he knows that the powers-that-be know it as well, and that therefore he has a free pass to juice before the games.

That, in a nutshell, is why I think that Blake's doping is evidence of Bolt's past doping, and highly suggestive of the possibility that Bolt is doping the month before the Games.

You're absolutely right, it is easy to allege this stuff, but it's not as easy to allege it well!

And once again, I don't really even care, it just sucks for those guys in history who worked hard to put up good times, only to watch them get absolutely blown away by the likes of Blake '11, and Bolt '08 and '09. (Except MJ's record, of course--it is gratifying to see that get blown away by anybody!)

Do either of Bolt or Blake look like the Hulk? Are you implying that Bolt used HGH from as early as 10 or 12. Basketball guys are what height and weight? Did Lebron juice? Bolt wouldn't even be a PF in Basketball.

Is Blake that muscular? His muscles don't look more hulking than many in the NFL, boxing or basketball.

Look again and tell me if you see any hulks. He is 5'11 and Bolt is 6'5. The average height in Norway in 6'3. That is average.

Can't you understand that Blake was expected to be this good and stayed home to train instead of the States where athletes run everything. This is my last post. If you can't accept that then its your problem. Do you think they care what is said on Letsrun? Haters can hate and speculate.

The outlier point has been beaten to death. I am an economist so don't tell me about a bell curve/

Isn't Tiger Woods an outlier when he was at his prime, isn't Nadal's domination clay an outlier since no one can beat him on it, Wasn't Ali an outlier or MJ in basketball?

Remember sport is man-made. If someone can do it better than everyone else doesn't mean squat.

If you were talking about someone being able to eat much more or faster than anyone else then you would have a better argument. For even that there is Joey Chestnut. Pity I am Jamaican and can identify so many 'outliers' in foreign sports.

Check cricket, a Commonwealth sport. The highest batting average in history is 99.96 runs per innings (or at bat for baseball). The second highest is in the 60s. Anything over 50 is considered great. Was Don Bradman doping in 1924 to achieve such a high average?

Was MJ doping when he dunked from close to the free throw line? Man-made thing means performances can vary. Not everyone can shoot a basketball, play tennis, play golf or sprint. India has 1 billion people and there are no sprinters. What bell curve? LOL...I'm done. Watch the Olympics. Gatlin could win for Christ's sake. Three men could false start and Lemaitre gets a flying start and holds on in a slow race after Bolt and Gay get injured in the 1st round.

We can't predict anything 100%. What bell curve? Is Normality a necessary condition for 100m sanity? LOL

wtfunny--

That is what I was trying to get at--the chances of the historical outlier being present NOW are exceedingly low (although of course at the moment we don't know if he actually IS an historical outlier or just the first of a new generation).

The chances of 2 outliers being present at the same time is so infinitesimal as to be zero. However, that argument once again assumes that they ARE outliers, and not just the first examples of a new class of performers. This is the kind of thing that Ilemy should be arguing, because the only really valid response that I can think of is that "time will tell".

It's not a great argument to be sure, because it is conjecture, but it is supported by the fact that there has been an historical progression in the mens 100m that shows no sign of having stopped prior to the arrival of Bolt, and in the 200, prior to the arrival of Bolt and Blake--however, a logical conclusion of that type of reasoning is that we will soon see people breaking both the 100m and 200m records.

As far as no good guys running the 200, yes, there were Boldon, Fredericks, Marsh, etc., and now, Gay, in addition to Bolt and Blake.

By now everybody knows that Blake had a huge negative split in the 19.26, 10.14 then 9.12, and that his 9.12 smoked the next-best second-100 split of 9.20 by MJ. If he hadn't fallen asleep in the blocks he would have gone 10.04 in the first 100, which is between MJ and Bolt--so really, his first 100 could be considered "normal" by an extremely elite standard, especially considering the forgiving curve.

But that second 100 gives him away--not only the split, but the WAY he just CHOSE to shift gears when Dix came up on him. I have NEVER seen anybody do that in a 200m while running against good competition...and a 19.5x guy is most certainly good competition--great, actually.

Anybody else, in any other race in history, would have tied up had they tried to go faster--it's just what happens. But it didn't happen to Blake. He DECIDED to win, and he did. And it wasn't that Dix was slowing down, it was that Blake was speeding up.

Yohan Blake, 19.16 - Carl Lewis, 19.75?

Sorry, no. Not that Lewis was the 200m GOAT, but that is just too big a difference. I understand what Ilemy is getting at with guys like the X-man, Spearmon, and Dix, and he could be right...but that is only slightly less ridiculous, 19.16 vs 19.6

Sorry, no.

Ilemy, your use of the basketball MJ is a good illustration of what I meant by just being the first of a next generation.

In my mind, Jordan clearly resulted in guys like Kobe. It is widely believed, and I agree, that Jordan would not stand out nearly as much if he played in today's league.

Certainly, with guys like Young, Bledman, Gemili, Lemaitre, Ashmeade, etc. coming up, not to mention a whole bunch of other guys, it will be interesting to see what kinds of times they, as a generation, put up relative to the times of the current generation.

Will we see them competing at 9.6x and 9.7x, as the current generation competes at 9.7x and 9.8x?, and as the generation previous to this one competed at 9.8x and 9.9x, and the generation before that at 9.9x and 10.0x?

Time will tell. Indications look pretty good, though--every time you turn around, someone is doing something amazing, like Young in Lucerne, or Gemili just recently.

I would ask you for explanations of this phenomenon. The jump from 9.9x/10.0x to 9.8x/9.9x likely resulted from better tracks and better spikes, but the jump from 9.8x/9.9x to 9.7x/9.8x was accompanied by rampant roid use. For me, the jump to 9.6x/9.7x is not currently explicable in any convincing way, apart from PED's.

Can you tell me WHY Blake, Ashmeade, Gemili, Young, etc. should be faster than Bailey/Surin/Boldon/Fredericks?

19.26 not 19.16. Given the track its really 19.4-19.5

Yes, they aren't outliers. Look at Jason Young, Warren Weir, Ashmeade...I wont give too much away. Look at Jazheel Murphy in the 100m at the WJC. He was laughed at for being fat by Eurosport comms.

He has a 10.27 PB from 2010 and is often injured. What are you guys going to say when he leaves high school and gets over his 'worst in the world start' and terrible form. Wait and see....

Tyson Gay regularly says it. Bolt's performance caused him to realise that 9.6 was possible. Everybody wants to beat Bolt. Everybody wants 9.6. He raised the bar and people are now catching up.

Do you know how many people want to run the 100m in Jamaica because of what Bolt and Powell have done? Larger talent pool and the 'Bolt effect'....

llemux wrote:

Tyson Gay regularly says it. Bolt's performance caused him to realise that 9.6 was possible. Everybody wants to beat Bolt. Everybody wants 9.6. He raised the bar and people are now catching up.

Do you know how many people want to run the 100m in Jamaica because of what Bolt and Powell have done? Larger talent pool and the 'Bolt effect'....

Completely agree with that. Look at the 4min mile.

Raising the bar is a human phenom, not just track, or even sport. Do you know how many kids can play, note for note, most of Jimi Hendrix's repertoire? Or painters might copy the Mona Lisa. Greatness is not just a function of how well you do xyz .. it's a matter of doing it before anyone else does.

A number of sports experts talk about the level humans are now at, and how the mental attitude is the #1 factor shaping improvement. MJ talked a lot about that, too.

llemux wrote:

Tyson Gay regularly says it. Bolt's performance caused him to realise that 9.6 was possible. Everybody wants to beat Bolt. Everybody wants 9.6. He raised the bar and people are now catching up.

Do you know how many people want to run the 100m in Jamaica because of what Bolt and Powell have done? Larger talent pool and the 'Bolt effect'....

Ben Johnson also raised the bar, and people caught up--but he certainly didn't do it it cleanly.

Ilemy, it is undoubtable that there is a "Bolt Effect", which is why I'm very interested in the next generation of sprinters.

Look at what happened after BJ--initially, you had a bunch of guys catching up, but it took drugs for them to do it.

After that initial bunch, you had guys who could maybe do it naturally--not many, to be sure, but some, first approaching the 9.83 like Bailey and Surin, then approaching the 9.79 like Powell and Gay.

I see the "Bolt Effect" the same way, with the difference being that there aren't as many immediate PED-followers as Johnson had--in fact, the only one who is apparent is Blake.

But after Blake, there will be that second wave, who could very well aim for that 9.69 cleanly, and after them, yet another wave who will aim for that 9.58 cleanly.

It took roughly 10 years after BJ's 9.83 for guys to approach it legitimately, and roughly 17-20 years after his 9.79 for guys to approach it legitimately.

Given that Bolt's 9.69 was in '08 and the 9.58 in '09, if the same progression will apply, we will see in 2018 guys approaching the 9.69, but we will have to wait until 2025-2028 for guys to legitimately approach the 9.58

The first wave is in their late teens now, like Gemili, and the second wave are not yet teenagers. These kids will be the legacy of the "Bolt Effect".

As for Blake, he is Bolt's Mo Greene.

I get your argument but its libelous against Blake. You know nothing about him.

There is no basis in fact to what you are saying. I will not comment any further about doping with regards to him. A my yute dat and I know where he is coming from and that he would never do that. I don't care what you rationalise. Nothing about his emergence is suspect or unexpected by T&F fans who have known him since 14. He went to my school and I saw him train alongside Ashmeade, Ryker Hylton etc. He was always exceptional.

He was always 10* more determined than the others because he grew up very poor. He had to live with high school coach. Time will prove me right. He might not win in London because he has a poor first 30m IMO but we will have to see. Only Bolt can beat him at 100%.

If you see the documentary "Can anybody beat Bolt?" you will see what I speak of. Blake is no joke or cheater. He works harder than Tyson Gay and deserves any success. Its not nationalism, its humanity and cheaters give off something that you can tell. Watch Gatlin or Mo Greene. Blake doesn't have that. What he does pre-race is boasting but getting himself relaxed. He isn't a hulk. He is a strong young man. Nothing suspicious there. You think Gay is motivated then listen to this boy named Blake. Add talent to Gay and you have Blake.

Done....

Ilemy--

Ouch!

I have no doubt that Blake would be fantastic naturally, however fast he ran--but your arguments carry very little weight.

Works harder than Gay? Hardly.

Grew up very poor? Many elite sprinters did.

Lived with coach? You know how many national-class, and even lesser, athletes do that?

More determined than others? Hardly.

The top 100 guys ALL work hard, even Bolt. They are ALL very determined, most grew up poor, many lived with coach or friends/extended family.

Stick with what is observable--his performance, and his trajectory, and how it has gone relative to others not only in his peer group, but in the modern era, and relative to both those who have been clean and those who have been juicing.

I will readily admit that you could have infinitely better knowledge of his performance and trajectory than I do, so please share what you know. Give us a brief overview if you would. I am totally open to convincing that he is not Johnson 4.0, and I will listen, I promise.

But keep in mind what I have said, and what Robson da Silva echoed in that BJ video: it's not necessarily what an athlete does, but how they do it, that gives them away. Da Silva was talking about the rapidity of Johnson's improvement. I'm talking about the earliness of Blake's greatness, and his absolute invincibility in that 200m. Nobody could have beat him that day--if Bolt had been there and run 19.10, Blake would have run 19.05 That day there was no limit for Blake, and that is the give-away.

Blake didn't try to run 19.16 that day, he DECIDED to run it--just like BJ DECIDED to go 9.83 in Rome. I understand confidence and being in the zone, but there's more to it than that.

This year, you will see Blake's real capabilities, based on last year's results. Now he knows. He has already PR'd in the 100m.

Unless Bolt has been juicing this past month, THERE WILL BE NOBODY WHO WILL BE ABLE TO TOUCH BLAKE IN EITHER THE 100M OR 200M, unless Blake makes a mistake like false-starting, stumbling, or running out of his lane. I personally guarantee that Blake will not sustain any muscular injury.

And when the recently-crowned GOAT Bolt has no chance of cleanly approaching Blake, the conclusion is obvious.

Bolt? Old, tall, tight chump.

Powell? Old, tall, fatigued chump.

Gay? Old, injured, limping chump.

Gatlin? Old, fat, shuffling chump.

When you are talking about 9.58/9.69 the best ever, the most sub-10 100's in history and multiple WR-holder, the second-fastest ever and all over the all-time rankings, and a previously roided Olympic champ and WR-holder as being chumps, there is something wrong.

And it's not that there's something wrong with ALL OF THEM, it's that there's something wrong with Blake. Blake is NOT the only one in step on parade this year.

My first hope is that a miracle occurs and that Collins wins in a PR. My second hope is that Powell wins in a good time. My third hope is that Bledman wins in a massive PR that is better than Blake's PR. My fourth hope is that Gay wins in a SB.

There are just so many guys to root for other than Blake.

You said it best--"cheaters give off something that you can tell." I don't know Blake, I have never met him, so I'm not in the best position to judge--but you yourself might be just a bit too close to get a good view. For me, Blake is almost at Carter's level in this regard.

And of course, the "grew up poor" argument can always be used against him, in that he has just that much more motivation to cheat, as his opportunities are otherwise limited, his poverty deep, and his prospects dismal. I stay away from that argument completely, it goes nowhere fast.

Do I know that he is juicing? No. Do I believe that he is more likely juicing than not? Yes. Do I believe that there is a strong possibility that is he juicing? Yes. Do I really care, notwithstanding how much I have written? No.

Give us his performance trajectory and put it into context. Make us believe.

llemux wrote:

The Blake issue is the opposite of Bolt. He rarely ran the 200m prior so the times before that were mostly speed endurance races or testers. His PB in 2007 was 20.62 (1.2) after running rounds of 100m and 200m plus 4*100 heats at the high school championships. He was 17 then. As you can see he ran 21.06 in June 08. This was during a year in which he had left his high school coach's house to being training professionally foregoing his final year of high school.

He went to the WJC and underperformed and came 3rd or 4th in the 100m after running injured. He was being rebuilt after having a heavy workload along with Ashmeade, Riker Hylton at school.

2008 was a transition year as you can see his 100m time fell off from a PB of 10.11 2007 to 10.27 in 2008. He was new to the Racers TC at 18 and still developing physically. Serious deficiencies in his transition from his drive phase were being corrected as well as a tendency to start slowly.

The result was 9.93 in 2009 in his first year running the Golden League. His 2009 SB in the 200m was set in February and he would not have been expected to be sharp. He only played with the idea of running the 200m until he got stronger. Nickel Ashmeade had overtaken him as he developed quicker but maybe didn't have the upside that Blake had.

The change in 200m came in 2010 when he tried a 200m and ran 19.76 narrowly losing to Gay and causing him a scare. This was a year when he could try a new event as there were no major championships. He ran 9.89 PB in the 100m less than a month later in -0.4 wind. He was still 20. People aside from those close to him and those who were most knowledgeable in Jamaica began to realise that he was actually ahead of where Bolt was at that age when Bolt suffered from injuries btw 17-19.

In 2011 he ran 9.82 (+0.1) and then caught a quick track with a long curve and tore it apart. The curve was the reason why he never was considered a 200m even in high school and would run it only for points.

The 19.26 race also saw PBs from Ashmeade and Dix in 3rd and 2nd. The 2nd place time was the fastest 2nd place time ever. If you say Blake doped then Dix and possibly Ashmeade doped.

Either that or question that curve in Brussels. Blake just took it easy and unleashed the final 100 utilising his speed endurance.

BTW Blake and I aren't friends. I was 4 grades ahead but I saw him training. Nothing more. He would know my face but we weren't peers.

I was already ill with Crohn's at that time so I gradually became less active. Therefore I wasn't prominent in school as much. Even now I finished my Masters and am trying to get healthier so I can work to help my parents out.

Yohan Blake, left, and Usain Bolt have stopped doing training sessions together ahead of London 2012, as their rivalry is too intense. On the morning of Monday 6 October 2008, so the story goes, Yohan Blake packed his bags and left Danny Hawthorne's house for the last time. It was not an easy thing to do. Blake had spent three years living with Hawthorne, his mentor and school sports coach. In that time they had won a lot of medals and broken a lot of records together.

Blake was on the brink of becoming a great sprinter, and Hawthorne was dreaming of making the step with him. He talked to the local press about how he was considering quitting his job at the school to become Blake's full-time coach on the international circuit. And then Blake walked out.

The timing was not accidental. Just six weeks earlier Usain Bolt had won the sprint double at the Beijing Olympics, both in world record times.

"That," Blake thought, "is what I want."

"I don't know anything," the hurt Hawthorne told the press at the time. "Nobody has said anything to me." He would, eventually, get a call from Blake's parents, Veda and Shirley, explaining exactly where their son had gone. He left Hawthorne to join Bolt's training group at the Racers Track Club in Kingston. He did what he believed he needed to do, despite what it cost.

Not long after that, early in 2009, Bolt gave an interview to Television Jamaica's Morning Time show. The host asked him if there were any athletes he saw as a potential threat. Bolt thought about it, and answered. "Blake is the man. He's very, very determined. He works very hard and in the future, he'll be very good because you can tell that he really wants it." Bolt soon took to calling Blake "The Beast".

"You know why Usain calls me 'The Beast'?" Blake said. "Because when you're sleeping, I'm working, I'm toiling through the night. It's what great men do."

When Blake was growing up in Bogue Hill he went by another nickname – Claude. That was what his family always called him. Blake is the sixth of Veda and Shirley's seven children. "I wasn't born with a golden spoon in my mouth," Blake said. "It was a really tough life. So many times, we had no money to even get to school. I'd have to find empty beer bottles to sell and spent hours carrying water on my head because we had no water at home. It gave me strength, which helps me today."

Back then Blake was more interested in playing cricket than he was in anything else. "As a boy, I'd rather have played for the West Indies than go to the Olympics," he said. "It was my dream. When I was starting out at 12, I didn't go to school a lot so I was putting up a stick in the yard and bowling at it." He still plays 20-over cricket in the St Catherine League on Sundays. Bolt also fancies himself as a quick bowler, and the two have a rivalry there as well. "Usain thinks he's much better than me but even though he gets more bounce and pace because he is really tall, I'm better. I'm pretty quick, fast through the air."

The school that Blake was skiving from was Green Park All-Age, in Clarendon. The principal was a man named O'Neil Ankle, who described himself as "a tough taskmaster". But he was also quick to reward achievement in his pupils. He had a "brag board" put up to record their achievements, and would reward them with buttons that said "World Changer". He watched Blake play cricket, and reckoned that he could see the makings of a sprinter in the way the boy ran in to bowl.

Ankle sent Blake off to Hawthorne at St Jago high, which had a reputation as a great school for athletes. "O'Neil told me that he saw something special in him," Hawthorne remembers. "He thought that St Jago was the right place for him to nurture that talent." It was only then, Shirley Blake remembers, that her boy began to show any interest in running. The family had moved down to a village called Bullet Tree. "He had this friend," Shirley says, "and the two of them would run from Bullet Tree to Old Harbour."

Hawthorne recalls that Blake was "not impressive at the all-age championships." But the coach was impressed with the kid's dedication. "He took training very seriously, and only missed it because of reasons beyond his control." That too was a debt to his parents. "I faced a lot of obstacles growing up, I see where my parents suffered to bring me here," Blake said when he was 16. "It would really hurt me if I waste my time when I know I have the potential to put myself in a good position to help them in the future."

Soon Blake's talent began to show through. He lost a few major races because of his nerves, notably at the World Junior Championships in 2006 and 2008. But his times continued to improve. In 2005 he set a personal best of 10.56sec in the 100m. The next year he lowered it to 10.33. Then, in the heats of the Carifta Games in 2007, he broke Raymond Stewart's Jamaican junior 100m record of 10.19. He shaved a single hundredth of a second off a mark that had stood for 28 years, that had been too quick for both Bolt and Asafa Powell at the same age. In the final he went quicker still, running 10.11.

That success threw Blake. When he arrived at Racers Track Club he was, according to the coach, Glen Mills, in a mess. "The first thing when we got him, he had a back and a hamstring problem that we had to attend to in his first year." Mills thought Blake had been scarred by an unexpected defeat at the high school championships in 2008. "When he started in his first meet, he froze, the gun fired and he didn't run. So we had to be patient with him and work on him both mentally and physically. We corrected his back, strengthened his hamstrings and then once that was in place, we started to work on him biomechanically."

Mills identified the problems Hawthorne had not been able to see. "His body was sitting down and arm movement wasn't going far back enough, which is where acceleration takes place," Mills explained. "Over the years, we worked incrementally on those things." Soon Blake started to fly. In May 2009, he became the youngest man ever to run under 10 seconds, when he clocked 9.93 in Paris. The next month, however, his career took its first serious knock when he tested positive for methylxanthine.

The stimulant was not on the World Anti-Doping Agency's prohibited drugs list at the time, but was added to it shortly afterwards. Blake was cleared of any wrongdoing but Jamaica's anti-doping commission insisted he serve a three-month ban regardless. That positive test will always provide evidence for the sceptics, but the circumstances were far from black and white. Several athletes around the world tested positive for methylxanthine at the time, including the South African rugby players Bjorn Basson and Chiliboy Ralepelle. It was a common ingredient in both nutritional supplements and nasal sprays, though it was often listed under a different name.

Blake says that he unknowingly ingested it while using an energy supplement. The positive test meant he missed the 2009 world championships in Berlin, when he would have been part of the 4x100m relay team.

He made up for that in 2011, when he won the world 100m title in Daegu after Bolt was disqualified. No one knows why Bolt false-started, but many suspect it was because he was spooked by Blake's speed. Blake made an even bigger statement in Brussels a few weeks later, when he ran the second-fastest 200m in history, 19.26. Bolt was there to see that one too, and he slapped his hand over his mouth in shock when he saw the time.

Three years ago, when Bolt gave that TV interview praising his young partner, no one paid him much mind. Now the two have stopped taking training sessions together. Their rivalry is too intense. Blake is the world 100m champion. He is ranked No1 in the world this year at both the 100m and the 200m, and most tellingly of all, he has beaten Bolt in both events at the Jamaican trials.

Blake is not on Bolt's shoulder any more. He is right up there with him, matching him stride for stride.

How the rivals compare

Yohan Blake

Strengths

A relentless training regime that has led to the nickname The Beast, a better start than Bolt and a more serious public persona than his rival: unlikely to be seen munching chicken nuggets on the morning of the 100m final

Weaknesses

May be 100m world champion but is untested at the Olympics and feeling persists that his rival and the occasion may get to him in London. Has got close to Bolt's 200m world record but is still 0.17secs off Bolt's best at 100m

Season's best times

100m: 9.75 Kingston 29 Jun 200m: 19.80 Kingston 1 Jul

Personal best times

100m: 9.75 Kingston 29 Jun 2012 200m: 19.26 Brussels 16 Sep 2011

Bolt on Blake

"He's very determined and he wants to win. And that keeps pushing me on as well"

Usain Bolt

Strengths

Big event performer with the times and formidable reputation to awe any opponent. His unbeatable reputation has taken a dent in recent weeks with successive defeats to Blake but he remains the man to beat at the Games

Weaknesses

Reputation for lax training and enjoying a party that has led to a tendency to crash cars. Poor starter: either too slow or jumps the gun, as he did in the world 100m final last year. Dogged by injury doubts

Season's best times

100m: 9.76 Rome 31 May 200m: 19.83 Kingston 1 Jul

Personal best times

100m: 9.58 Berlin 16 Aug 2009 200m: 19.19 Berlin 20 Aug 2009

Blake on Bolt

"He always gives me a lot of encouragementand tells me to keep coming to the events"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/13/yohan-blake-usain-bolt-london-2012