TOKYO: Usain Bolt believes he could have clocked an astonishing 9.42 seconds in the 100 metres if he had access to today’s advanced carbon-plated "super-spikes".
The Jamaican sprint legend set his iconic 9.58-second world record at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, breaking his previous best of 9.69 from the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Remarkably, his record has now stood for 16 years – surpassing the 14-year reign of Jim Hines’s 9.95 mark, set at the 1968 Mexico City Games.
Research conducted by Puma – the brand that outfitted Bolt during his legendary career – suggests he could have run the 100 metres in 9.42 seconds using today’s high-tech sprinting shoes. Speaking ahead of the World Championships in Tokyo, Bolt backed the claim, saying, "I fully agree."
"Someone who continued after I retired was Shelly-Anne Fraser-Pryce and I saw what she did - she got faster with the spikes, " Bolt said on Thursday. "I probably would have run way faster if I'd continued and if I knew that spikes would have got to that level maybe I would have, because it would have been great to compete at that level and running that fast."
Kishane Thompson lit up the Jamaican championships in June with a blistering 9.75-second run - the fastest 100m time recorded in the past decade - elevating him to sixth on the all-time list. Despite the surge in performances, Bolt isn’t losing sleep over his long-standing world record.
"I think the talent is there and those who are coming up will do well but, at this present moment, I don't think they will be able to break the world record, " Bolt said.
Since Bolt’s retirement in 2017 - after amassing six Olympic golds and seven world titles in the 100m and 200m - no Jamaican man has claimed a global sprint title. The last was Bolt himself, completing the 100m and 200m double at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Thompson came within five-thousandths of a second of snapping that drought last year, narrowly edged out by Noah Lyles in the Olympic 100m final. But Bolt believes the breakthrough could finally come this weekend in Tokyo, with either Thompson or fellow Jamaican Oblique Seville stepping up.
"I think we have a very good chance this year. Kishane and Oblique have really showed this season that they're really doing extremely well. I'm looking forward to it, I mean they should be one-two because they've proved they are running fast times so it's just all about execution. So I'm happy to go into the stadium and see and hopefully I'll be able to present the gold medal to one of them, " he said.