Usain Bolt - Faster than Lightning - My Autobiography

Before I go on, I want to explain how it is with dating in Jamaica because, believe me, the scene is pretty different to the way it is in Europe, Australia or the States. In the Caribbean, guys play around a lot , and even though the girls don’t like it, that way of life seems to be accepted for some reason, especially among teenagers. It was the same for me, but I wasn’t as bad as some of the people that I knew, mainly because I didn’t understand The Game that well. Certainly not as well as some of the athletes I’d been meeting on the Champs scene.

Before the World Juniors, my record read like most boys my age – I was inexperienced. By eighth grade I had a serious girlfriend, but that became stressful after I started messing with another girl. Unsurprisingly, I soon got found out. A boy at a school like William Knibb learns pretty quickly that there’s no hiding place, especially when he’s playing with two girlfriends at the same time, from the same playground . I found it impossible – I just couldn’t balance having to look after two dates and I got into a lot of trouble. Believe me, a scorned Jamaican female is a stress.

Things changed after the World Juniors. Suddenly I had an angle. Girls wanted to hang with me because I’d been in every single newspaper in the country and I was the local celebrity. I’d also learned The Game better. I picked up tricks from dudes in the Jamaican track and field team. I could watch the way those guys rolled and the style with which they handled their girlfriends. I soon got more ambitious, I discovered how to date tactically, and rather than seeing two girls from the same school, I would meet with dates from different schools. I think the most I had at any one time was three, and when that happened I thought I was The Man .

I didn’t just misbehave with the girls, I was playing around in other ways, too. One time I even tried ganja, which I know sounds like a pretty messed-up admission coming from an Olympic gold medallist, but straight up it was something I did only once, and I regretted it immediately, even though when I lived out in the country, lots of people smoked the stuff.

I’m not making excuses now, and I’m not condoning it, but that’s just the way it was. If ever I played football in the park with friends, there was always a gang of boys smoking spliff, and one day, as a joint got passed around, I became tempted. I figured, ‘You know what? Give me a hit! ’ But as soon as I sucked on the rolled-up cigarette, I hated it. The stuff was horrible and I became tired almost from the second I’d drawn in the first lungful.

The rush hit me hard, I felt dizzy. I thought, ‘Forget this!’ And as I sat there, dazed, I could tell that it wasn’t the road for me to go down. First of all because Pops would have stabbed me in the neck if ever he’d caught me fooling around like Bob Marley, and secondly because I could tell the stuff would make me seriously lazy if I smoked it too much. I was already pretty relaxed, but I could see from the people around me that if I smoked a lot of ganja I would become a waster. Instead, I wanted to be motivated, especially when it came to racing, because racing and winning was so much fun.

As a promising athlete, the JAAA flew me around the globe. Not long after the World Junior Champs, I was invited to collect the IAAF Rising Star Award, an accolade given to the most promising kid in track and field. Talk about a tough geography paper, though. I had to travel to Monte Carlo on my own, which was a disaster because, when I came back, I missed my connecting flight from London. Man, I did not have a clue what to do.

First things first – I went to a lady on the nearest check-in desk and asked for help.

‘Oh no, dear,’ she said, when I asked if I could get on another plane. ‘I’m sorry, we can’t give you a seat just yet …’

‘What the hell is going to happen now?’ I thought. Tears came down. The lady saw my face and became all concerned.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘When this happens, the company puts you up in a hotel for the night and we’ll get you on a flight home first thing tomorrow morning. You’ll be fine.’

I felt relieved, but once I’d checked into my room, I could not sleep. I was so worried about missing my plane the next morning that I decided to sit up all night, my bag perched on my lap, as I desperately tried to stay awake. Half an hour before a shuttle bus was due to take me back to the airport, I was checked out and waiting on a bench outside the hotel lobby, shivering in the rain, staring at my watch. I couldn’t wait to get home.

If that happened today, I’d buy myself another ticket. I’d probably find a party; I might even think, ‘To hell with this! London’s a pretty cool city to hang out in, I’ll stay for a couple of days.’ But that day I was freaked. I was a kid, 16 years old, I had no money, and for a while I thought I was going to be stranded in England for ever with the seriously cold weather and weird food.

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