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.