Usain Bolt - Faster than Lightning - My Autobiography

‘You know what?’ I thought. ‘Being a World Junior champ feels kinda nice!’

As the celebrations went on around me, I thought about what had happened to me out there, Mom’s chat on the verandah, my spikes on the wrong foot. For a second, I had lost it, my mind had gone, my race had stuttered, but I’d still won. How the hell had that happened? How I had walked out in front of an international crowd and dealt with the pressure? Damn, it all seemed pretty crazy to me.

I had landed as a track and field star. I had found mental strength when most athletes would have freaked. I had shut the jitters out and carried the burden of a nation’s hopes on my shoulders. Even better, I’d come through a champ. I knew that nothing was going to faze me after that. Pre-race nerves were done with; no pressure was going to mess with my mind. How could there be anything more stressful than the start line at the World Juniors in front of a crazy home crowd?

The penny dropped with me about how important confidence was to a sprinter, especially in a short event like the 200 metres where supreme mental strength was often the key difference between myself and some of the other racers in my meets. I knew I couldn’t let a negative thought cloud my judgement ever again, because mental strength was a tool in every race, it was as important as a fast start or a powerful drive phase. There was no opportunity for doubt because the contest was over in the blink of an eye. Distraction for one hundredth of a second might be enough to lose a race.

It was my first step to becoming an Olympic legend. As I walked around the National Stadium track I realised I was an athlete that lived for the moment, like the real superstars lived for the moment – The Big Moment. Whereas ordinary guys worried and quivered when they arrived on the Olympic or World Champs stage, the superstars, the Michael Johnsons and Maurice Greenes of this world, were excited by the pressures and the stresses. They moved up a notch, both physically and mentally. At The Big Moment, their performances rocked bells.

I figured I was capable of channelling that same mental power. The World Juniors had been my first Big Moment and I hadn’t collapsed under the weight of Jamaica’s expectation. During my celebratory salute to the fans, I was already mentally transformed. I was a world champ, I’d become the Lightning Bolt to the planet. It was my greatest ever race. Probably always will be.

*Class One was the under-19s event, Class Two was under-16s, Class Three was under-14s; I could have raced in the third class but I would have won too easily, so Coach McNeil placed me in the group above.

†Jermaine would later go on to win bronze in the 400 metres at the World Junior T&F Championships, set a Jamaican national senior 400 metre record and finish fourth in the 400 metres at the 2011 World Championships.

My winning the Junior Champs was so big that when I got home to Sherwood Content after my gold medal race, I was flown to Montego Bay, where a motorcade was waiting for me.

A motorcade.

Now that was big, ridiculously big. The roads that led home to Coxeath were lined with hundreds of people and, as the car passed, they chased after us, forcing their hands into the open window to touch me. All of them were screaming and shouting my name, yelling ‘Bolt! Bolt! Bolt!’ as they raced down the street. It was nearly as crazy as the reception I’d received back in the National Stadium.

I couldn’t believe it. I knew that Jamaicans had a lot of respect for their sports guys, especially in track and field, but a victory parade was something I hadn’t expected. Still, I guess I should have seen it coming. It was pretty clear that I was the dude of the moment. After my 200 win, I’d picked up silver medals in the 4x100 metre relay and 4x400 metre relay, setting national junior records in both with times of 39.15 seconds and 3:04.06 minutes respectively. Everyone was going wild for me.

That’s when I got a quick taste of what fame might be like. For some stupid reason, I’d decided to go for a walk into the seats with Jermaine Gonzales following my last race. Both of us had wanted to watch the girls’ 4x400 metres final, but the place was still ram-packed. Straightaway I knew I’d made a big mistake because as we tried to find a space everybody wanted to talk to me. And I mean everybody. All over the bleachers, people, strangers, were telling me that I was the future of Jamaican sport. I had never signed an autograph before in my life, but within minutes I must have signed dozens and dozens, hundreds maybe. The scraps of paper kept on coming, thick and fast. It took me two hours to get out of the crowd.

On the morning of my return to Trelawny, it was clear to me that I had become one of the most famous people in Jamaica. My face was all over the newspapers; fans were raving about me in bars. Radio and TV stations hyped me up. Luckily, my head stayed screwed on throughout all the craziness. Mom and Pops had taught me so much about respect that during the motorcade I said ‘Hello’ to everybody, just like I had done when I was little, even though it would have been much easier just to wave. People were getting pushy as they tried to shake my hand, but I kept myself humble. As I said, Dad was so serious when it came to manners. If I’d acted big time in public that day, he probably would have cut me off for good.

It was a different story at school, though. I was young, turning 16, and everybody at William Knibb knew who I was. Kids, students I had never even said ‘Hi’ to before, were telling me I was great. People looked up to me, and not just because I was so tall – I had achieved success on the world stage, which made me a big deal. Even the teachers changed their attitude. Some of them weren’t as tough as they had been before my success in the World Junior Championships. If my test scores were bad or I flunked an essay, they went easy on me.

The relaxed attitude didn’t last long, though. There were only so many tests I could fail, and once Pops got to hear about my poor scores he flipped. I was told that if I blew my end-of-year tests, then the principal, Miss Lee, would make me repeat the grade. That would mean a year of extra school fees, which the family didn’t really want to pay for, not if it could be avoided.

It was decided that I should get a tutor to help me out in the evenings and I was introduced to a guy called Norman Peart. Mr Peart was a tax officer working in Montego Bay and a part-time teacher with a solid reputation, who was previously a graduate of William Knibb and Jamaica College. He also had a history in the 800 metres, so he knew a few tricks when it came to balancing school work with track and field training. A timetable was fixed and we agreed Mr Peart would come around a couple of evenings a week. Between us, we planned on getting my crap together.

But there were distractions to deal with. I was the local superstar, and the girls of Trelawny wanted to hang out with a world champ, which was a cool discovery. Up until that point I had been naïve with the opposite sex. I was a country boy, and living in the sticks meant I had to learn the art of dating for myself, which was hard sometimes. There was nobody to teach me how to impress a girl I’d taken a shine to in class, and we didn’t have magazines telling us how to charm women like they did in America or Europe. If I’d lived in a city like Kingston it might have been different, I could have picked up information by watching the people around me. In Coxeath I had to work out The Game on my own.