Bolt
Paul A. Reid, Staff Reporter
WESTERN BUREAU:
NEWLY-CROWNED national men's 200 metres champion Usain Bolt has unfinished business to take care of at the third International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) World Youth Championships in Sherbrooke, Canada from July 9-13.
At the last staging of the event in 2001 in Debrecen, Hungary, Bolt, who was representing the island for only the second time after competing at the CARIFTA Games earlier in the year, failed to get past the semi-finals.
After running 21.94 seconds to win his heat, Bolt ran a then personal best 21.73 seconds for fifth place in his semi-final heat and failed to advance.
Tesfa Latty, who was the other Jamaican in the event, advanced to the final after a then personal best 21.49 seconds but placed fourth in the final in 21.64 seconds.
A lot has happened since then and Bolt is not just favoured to win both the 200m and the 400m but if the conditions and the competition is favourable, could break the World Junior Record (WJR) in the shorter event.
With personal bests of 20.24 seconds in the 200m and 45.35 seconds in the quarter-mile, Bolt should be the class of the field for the event that was introduced to give world class exposure to athletes under the age of 18.
All things being equal, he should at least smash both meet records in the two events as the 200m record is held by Timothy Benjamin of Great Britain who set the time of 20.72 at the first staging of the event in Bydgoszcz, Poland in 1999 while the 400m record of 46.90 seconds is held by Poland' Karol Grzegorczyk set in 2001 in Hungary.
While he was relatively unknown outside of track and field circles in Jamaica in 1999, Bolt is at present an international commodity after winning the 200m gold medal at the IAAF World Junior Championships in Kingston last year. Bolt has been unbeaten in an individual final for the past two seasons and will be seeking to pass Omar Brown's second place in the 200m in the first WYC held in 1999.
In an interview last week, Bolt said he was not certain of who his competitors would be in Canada but knows his times were far better than those of the other competitors as the best time he had heard of coming into the meet, other than his, was just under 21 seconds.
The 16-year-old William Knibb student, who also runs on the 4x100m relay team, showed his love for speed other than his own as he was on his way to see the movie '2 Fast 2 Furious'.
He reported that "everything is working good right now, I am ready to run fast and looking to go below 20.13 seconds (at the WJR)".
The record is held by American Roy Martin and was set on June 16, 1985 in Indianapolis.
Bolt, who turns 17 on August 22, the day before the start of the ninth IAAF World Championship in Paris, is trying to make the best of what will be a short summer holiday as he has been named on a number of national teams this summer, leading up to the World Championships at the end of August.
He recently sat five subjects in the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) exams but told The Sunday Gleaner he is not looking too far beyond this summer, taking things one step at a time.
