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Usain Bolt won his third-consecutive gold medal in the 100m final on Sunday night in Rio, running a 9.81 and producing perhaps the greatest Olympic photo of all time in the process.
Bolt got the gold, but didn’t break his world record pace of 9.58, and it may have had something to do with the timing of the race itself. The final of the 100m went on at 10:25 local time, just over an hour after the semifinal heats which took place at 9:00, 9:07, and 9:14. Yes, these sprinters are only going for less than 10 seconds, but they still need ample recovery time after a race if they are expected to be at their best. That’s not what happened, though, and Bolt was none too pleased about it after the race.
“It was very hard to run fast because the turnaround was really, really, really short,” he said after the race. “It was ridiculous. I felt so good in the semifinals. I thought it could have been a fast finals. But by the time you get back and relax, it is time to go back out. It was really stupid. I don’t know who decided that. It was really stupid. That’s why the race was slow. There is no way to come back around and run fast times with that turnaround. It was hard.”
American Justin Gatlin, who took home the silver, also expressed displeasure at the timing of the race, saying he only had 30 minutes after his semifinal to prep for one of the biggest races of his life. Both Bolt and Gatlin admitted they were tired after the final. While both men are past their primes physically which may have contributed to it, it didn’t help that their recovery time was so short, and that may have prevented them from shaving off that .3-.5 seconds they needed to set world-record paces.
(Via Sporting News)
