Owen Slot, Chief Sports Reporter
Usain Bolt has targeted the 2012 Olympics in London as the time and place when he will deliver the ultimate performance of his athletics career.
He told The Times that, before the Games come to Britain, he expects to lower his existing world record of 9.69sec and that he believes that, eventually, he can edge the time to below 9.60.
And he hopes and expects to grace London 2012 with that all-time peak performance “because that’s when I’ll really need to work to defend all my titles”.
He might need Tyson Gay to help him to hit that highest of high notes, but he believes that the American is already carefully avoiding him.
Gay will come later. Presently, he has London in mind.
Bolt uses the capital as his base for much of the summer and the Jamaican will run in Crystal Palace in the London Aviva Grand Prix on Friday and Saturday, but he has greater ambitions for the next Olympics.
He broke the world 100 metres record at the Beijing Games last summer when he was 21 and it is the good fortune of London 2012 that, fitness permitting, his body and mind will have reached maturity for a world-class sprinter in three years’ time.
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Bolt’s talent, which so astonished the watching world last year, is not only record-breaking, but also increasingly consistent.
Last summer was not a one-off - with Bolt repeatedly delivering the same high standards this year, talk of records and when and where they will be broken does not appear to be misplaced.
He estimates that, in the past year, he has probably missed a month of training because of post-Olympic celebrations and other problems, “like the car accident [Bolt crashed his BMW in Jamaica in April]”. He therefore says that he has “a lot of work to do to get to where I should be” but that “if I put my mind to it, I should be OK”.
So, on these terms, does he believe that his record could fall at the World Championships in Berlin next month? “I think so,” he said. “If I get myself to where I want to be, I should be in good shape to break the world record there.”
It sounds a little preposterous to be discussing the 100 metres world record so presumptuously, but it is not a topic of conversation that Bolt particularly welcomes because in private he derives little pleasure from talking up his achievements and also because it is not the record that motivates him.
“A lot of people want times,” he said, “but for me it’s about winning championships.”
To see the best on the clock from Bolt, therefore, it stands to reason that someone else - and not the stopwatch - will have to push him. This is where Gay comes in. The fastest times this year over 100 and 200 metres have been run by the American, who completed a sprint double at the previous World Championships in Osaka two years ago.
Bolt’s rivalry with Gay is potentially one of the all-time great head-to-heads. “Tyson’s shown that he is ready to come at me,” Bolt said. “And I’m trying to get myself into shape so I am ready to compete with him.”
The Jamaican would certainly relish it. “I wouldn’t mind if I ran against him two or three times a year,” he said. “That way, if he beat me, then I can say: ‘This is where I need to be and what I need to work on.’
“For me, it’s good to run against your competitor. That way, when it comes to your big race, you’ll be so used to him, you’ll know what you need to do to beat him, so there will be no pressure.”
There is no doubt how much athletics would love to have these two racing each other regularly. Talking at a Gatorade science and sprinting masterclass for children recently, Bolt said that he hoped Gay would run the 100metres at Crystal Palace.
Almost the next day, Gay signed a contract to compete in the 200 metres at the South London track instead.
Recent history shows how rival athletes have gone out of their way to avoid direct competition. Before the Beijing Olympics, Gay and Asafa Powell were the headline sprinters, yet their rivalry was disappointingly limited. Likewise this summer, the mouthwatering Bolt-versus-Gay clash will remain under wraps until Berlin.
The obvious interpretation is a fear of defeat. Bolt would not claim that Gay is running scared, but he did say: “I’d run against him as much as possible. I don’t think he wants that, but every race would be good for me.”
Does he believe that fear of defeat is a justifiable reason for one athlete avoiding another? “I don’t think so,” he said. “You’ve got to face your fears.”
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