Bolt rules out 2012 hat-trick bid

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From

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/athletics/8080583.stm

Double Olympic sprint champion Usain Bolt will not be going for a hat-trick of individual titles at London 2012.

It had been suggested that Bolt would look to try and add the 400m crown to the 100m and 200m golds he won in Beijing last year.

But the Jamaican, 22, dismissed the possibility of adding to his schedule.

“I never actually said that I could run three events. I may be doing 100m and 200m, or 200m and 400m, but not all three,” Bolt said.

“I don’t think that I could do that at one track meet, so somebody got it wrong along the line.”

“I may be doing 100 and 200, or 200 and 400, but not all three”

Usain Bolt
Bolt, who was also part of the winning 4x100m team in Beijing in August, has set up a track club in Kingston to aid the next generation of sprinters.

The Racers Track Club, which has Bolt’s coach Glen Mills as president, coaches athletes for the 100m, 200m, 400m and 400m hurdles.

Twenty-three athletes, including two female sprinters, are currently training at the club, with the sprinters coming from around the Caribbean and Africa.

“I know a few of them come prepared every day to win,” added Bolt.

606: DEBATE
Is Bolt the greatest sprinter of all time?
“Some are here because of me, but they are targeting me and want to beat me, which is something that I welcome and I look forward to them coming here.”

Bolt, the world record holder over both 100m and 200m, ran the fastest 150m in history to win a street race in Manchester last month.

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With respect to Usain Bolt, nobody suggested he would run the treble anywhere.

It was merely suggested that he Could go for all three by Attempting a treble - like his countryman the late Herb McKenley did with a couple of silvers and a fourth.

And when quizzed, the IAAF spokesman said they’d consider it if Bolt wanted to do it.

He says he doesn’t want to run the treble in London or anywhere else. Fair enough.

Let’s wait and see at the end of 2010 whether by which time he holds the WR for 400m. Then let’s see if he is still negative on the prospect of a treble.

Personally, I think a couple of medals in the hand are better than the prospect of three in the bush (huh?)… you know what I mean. Anyway, he’s already got a couple, plus WRs and the 4x1 as well.

But his level of superiority over his contemporaries last year at 100 and 200, plus his long contemplated potential over 400m (he clocked 45.3 at age 16:eek:) suggests he is such an extraordinary talent and may be interested in doing something else, new and outrageous, which would mark him indisputably the greatest sprinter - perhaps the greatest athlete - of all time; greater even than Emil Zatopek who won the 5000m, 10000, and marathon gold medals at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics where McKenley took a shot at the sprint treble. They were talented and adventurous.

I’m not critical of Bolt for not daring to run the treble.

It would be an outrageous task.

But when you think that Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis each won four events at the Olympics, if the IAAF stretched the program out to make a sprint treble feesable, perhaps success in such a feat would not be beyond Bolt.

He is a phenomenon. It would be exciting to see him attempt something phenomenal. Crazy, but exciting. Impossible? Easy to say, until someone comes along and does it. Bolt has this opportunity if the IAAF complies. Time will tell. He may change his mind. He probably has until the end of 2011 world championships to call it.

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I think he wants the world record in the 400m and while he might still win the 400m if he attempts all three, I don’t think he will get the world record. The 100m training will hurt his 400m time.

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I kinda think the other way. Like maybe the 400 training might make his 100 suffer a bit…that is if this were a normal human being we were talking about.

Remember FloJo, she could have won all three I’m guessing. Bolt may be the only person who is also a freak of that magnitude. With Bolt like FloJo before him, the ‘norm’ goes out the window.