By Sally Young
Email yo-sal@cox.net
He's young. He likes fast food, video games, and dancing in Jamaican style: Nuh Linga, Gully Creep, and Tek Weh Yaself. But on the training field, Usain St Leo Bolt, the most phenomenal sprinter ever, is as disciplined as you would expect from a guy who holds the 100m (9.58 s) and 200m (19.19 s) World and Olympic titles at the same time. At the 2009 World Championships, the Lightning Bolt reached a top speed of 27.79 mph (44.6 kmh) at the 80-meter mark, covering twelve meters (about forty feet) per second.
Enormously gifted, he was a prodigy at the age of 15. He ran the fastest 200m of anyone his age in history, and the records still hold. At Beijing, his towering 6'5" and 210 pounds out-sized the next competitor by 3 inches and 20 pounds, giving him a psychological advantage. "It looked like his knees were going past my face,² said Tyson Gay, second finisher.
No one really knows the limit of human speed. Studies show fast runners hit the ground hard and spring up quick. Bolt slams down with roughly 1000 pounds of force, tagging the ground for 0.05 seconds.
Bolt¹s autobiography is scheduled for release in 2012.
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