Standing in the great concrete corridor of the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing, Harvey Glance did not know whether to laugh or cry. His American sprinters had just been annihilated for the second time by a Jamaican giant and he was still trying to find some firm ground for his thoughts.

Glance is a former Olympic champion, in the 1976 US 4x100m relay, and has graduated to become the head coach of the US sprint team. He is built like a sprinter used to be, short and squat, with strong legs and a deep laugh. He has been a fan of sprinters and sprinting all his life, has known little else, so the sight of a 6ft 5in 21-year-old with a 7ft stride and two world records had thrilled and appalled him in equal measure. Like most others, including the man himself, Glance felt Michael Johnson’s 200m world record of 19.32, set in Atlanta, would last the distance of these Olympics. Usain Bolt, he knew, might get close, at least if he ran properly, not like a kid at an all-comers race at high school, but that was a record not easily erased.

He was still shaking his head an hour after the race. “The 100m world record was impressive because of how he did it,” said Glance. “But this one [the 200m] was truly shocking. Pretty well everyone thought it was unbreakable. You’ve got to take your hat off to him.” Then he paused as the sceptical part of his brain took over. “Just remember two words. Ben Johnson. We don’t ever want to think again about what would happen on this sort of stage.”

The warning was clear, but like all those privileged to witness the greatest series of sprints in history over the past week, Glance was happy to construct a theory in which Bolt’s talent is natural and his unprecedented two individual and one relay world records untainted.

“Usain was a phenomenal athlete at 15, don’t forget,” he said. “No one has ever doubted his ability. It was a matter of him staying healthy and maturing. People say he’s altering the shape and stature of the sprinter, but there’s been tall sprinters before, Carl Lewis, Steve Williams, but they didn’t have such quick feet or have a drive phase at 40m. Once he was rolling, Carl could embarrass you, but this guy can embarrass you off the blocks. I watched his 100m last night and I didn’t realise some of the things he was doing out there. It was a perfectly executed 70m.”

A Swedish sprint coach analysed Bolt’s first world record, 9.72, run on a night of thunder and, yes, lightning at Randall’s Island, New York, on May 31. He took 41 strides to cover 100m. Glen Mills, Bolt’s coach, confirmed that Bolt’s Olympic 100m took 41 and a half.

Asafa Powell, Bolt’s great friend and rival, who trailed home fifth in the Olympic 100m, habitually takes between 45 and 48 strides, depending on his start and how quickly he reaches full speed. Kim Collins, the former world champion, from St Kitts and Nevis and far smaller than Bolt, complained that he had to take two strides to every one of Bolt’s. It’s an outline of an explanation for what the world has witnessed in Beijing.

Another conversation took place in the bowels of the Bird’s Nest last week. It was between an American journalist and Dr Warren Blake, one of the medical team working with the Jamaican track and field squad. “Is it right that Usain trains on a grass track?” asks the journalist. “Yes, that’s right,” answers Dr Blake. “We have an all-weather track at the National Stadium and one in Montego Bay and we hope to get one in Trelawny now so that Usain and Asafa can train on it.” “So they train on a grass track?” “Yes, but they hone their skills on the all-weather track at the National Stadium. The grass is good for the legs, you know.” Had he but asked, he would have found out about the gym at the stadium in Trelawny too, a “junk gym”, according to Powell. This is the way it is in Jamaica, a seductive part of the Usain Bolt story.

A teacher called Pablo McNeil can claim some credit for the discovery of the elongated son of Jennifer and Wellesley Bolt, who ran the local grocery store. Bolt wanted to be a cricketer in his early days and a part of him still wants to be Chris Gayle or Brian Lara. But McNeil thought the track was a natural home and, when, at the age of 15, his protege set a world junior record for the 200m with 20.61, there was never much doubt about the wisdom of the switch. Two years later, Bolt became the first junior to break 20 seconds for the 200m. Those records give credence to the idea, much voiced here in Beijing, that Bolt is a freak.

Nothing could be further from the truth in one sense. Bolt comes from a typically humble house in a rural area of Trelawny. He went to the local Waldensia Primary School and on to the William Knibb High School, the same as everybody else. As a teenager, he preferred partying to training, which did not mark him out from his peers either. “When I was young I didn’t really think about anything other than sports,” Bolt said yesterday. “I played cricket and football before I turned to track and field. I still love my cricket, anyone who’s aggressive, Chris Gayle, Matthew Hayden, definitely, Freddie Flintoff, because that’s the way I played.”

But everyone agreed that if young Usain took athletics more seriously he would become a champion. For a long while, it did not look that way. No one doubted Bolt’s talent, just his application. When Powell broke the world record, the acclaim always came with an asterisk. There’s one faster than Asafa living in the same parish.

While Powell moved to a bigger house up the hill and dominated the world record, Bolt took time to mature as a competitor. Not until he came under the guidance of Glen Mills, who coached the great Don Quarrie and took Collins to the world championship in Paris, did Bolt begin to add the work ethic and mentality to the obvious talent. He was physically ready for the world championships in 2003, but was so inexperienced he only ran in the relay. In Athens, he was injured and went out in the first round of the 200m.

In Mills’s eyes, if there was a double to be had, it would be the 200m and 400m, not the standard sprint combination of 100m and 200m. Mills was against Bolt’s double until that night in Randall’s Island when the world record was smashed. The profit motive dictated the future then, but the old threat remained. “If you don’t win the gold tonight,” Mills told Bolt before the 100m, “I’ll get you running the 400m.”

Bolt sees the 400m as too much like hard work, but much of his endurance work, the hard graft that has helped to fill out the frame, has been done over the longer distance. “This year has been part two of what we started last year,” said Mills. “Last year, we started to adjust sprinting mechanics and this year we focused on running 100m and speed training. His sprinting ability has shown significant improvement.”

It was then a matter of honing his bend-running technique, of persuading Bolt to lean forward rather than into the bend, and getting his start right. Mills, a devotee of the 200m, surprisingly chose the first half of Bolt’s 100m as his prize moment of the Games. “We’d worked hard on my start,” explained Bolt. “The first 20m has been my main problem. It takes time to get the technique right. I executed it right, so I guess that’s why he’s happy.”

Switch to a downtown Beijing shopping centre, venue for a Puma-sponsored press conference yesterday. Bolt is dressed in green t-shirt and black jeans; one of his three gold medals hangs around his neck. He mimes his trademark lightning bolt, accepts a replica of the silver BMW he will receive from his European sponsors and answers a series of questions with as much verve as he can muster. Now is the time to cash in. He has already netted a £500,000 bonus from Puma and will command six-figure appearance fees for the Golden League meetings in Zurich and Lausanne in the next fortnight.

Bolt leaves Beijing with universal acclaim ringing in one ear and the criticism of Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, echoing in the other. Rogge thought Bolt should tone down his celebrations as a courtesy to the other athletes. “I talked to the other athletes and most are okay with it,” said the champion. “I’m just enjoying myself, that’s pretty much it. I think it makes the fans happy too because I’m showing my personality. People enjoy watching me so I’ll stay the way I am.”

Nothing, though, will be the same for Usain Bolt. He has broken three world records and taken three Olympic gold medals in a heartbeat over 66 seconds. He has made 9.69, 19.30 and 37.10 the magic numbers of these Games, superceding the eight golds of Michael Phelps, and he has done it with a thrilling innocence. “I wouldn’t say I’m a phenomenon,” he said yesterday. “I’m probably just a great athlete.”

32

Years since both the 100m and 200m sprint world records were broken by the same man. Don Quarrie, the legendary Jamaican sprinter, managed the feat outside of Olympic competition in 1976.