HOW quickly would Usain Bolt have run the 100 metres at the Beijing Olympics if he hadn't slowed in celebration before the finish line? A team of physicists have calculated an answer: the Jamaican gold medallist could have slashed his time from 9.69 seconds to 9.55 seconds.
I'd say their calculations are pretty accurate; he beat the world record, but would have cut more off the ticker if he wasn't so boisterous before the finish line.
since he's just coming into the best years for a runner, I think we're going to have an opportunity to see how much faster he can run
forget about could have - I'm looking forward to Usain Bolt's future runs.
I hope you're right, but shit happens, and in a sport where 1mph headwinds or tailwinds make a difference, you hate to see any opportunities wasted. He's a young man, I suspect he learned a lot by watching the tapes of that run. He looked a whole lot more determined at the end of his next few races.
what got me about the celebration was that if you watch the race at actual speed, not slow-mo, you barely notice what he's doing--after all, if the physicists' calculations are correct, it only slowed him down about 3/20 of a sec.
I saw it as it happened and immediately wondered what he was doing at the end of the race. My first impression was that he was treating it like a qualifier race. I actually think he got so used to just beating the other runners in the qualifiers that he simply forgot (momentarily) that the 100m final was a race against himself, not against others.
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