BOLT STILL RUNNING AS THE BEST

Bolt is purring... and in 200m final you'll see that man CAN fly!

Usain Bolt does not run the 200 metres. He flies. On Wednesday night he sauntered. Analysis of his victory in the Olympic 100m on Sunday show that in the 9.63sec from gun to tape, Bolt was connected to the earth for no more than two seconds. It is almost inaccurate to call what he does running.

'His stride is wildernesses of freedom: the world rolls under the long thrust of his heel,' wrote Ted Hughes. The poet saw a jaguar trapped behind cage bars in a zoo and imagined its dream,  turning the world on its axis with each stride of its giant paws. When Bolt runs as freely as he did in last night’s 200m qualifier it must feel like that, too. 

Each pace a revolution, lapping not just a track, but a planet, kicking off into air and  landing, whole continents gobbled up and still twirling beneath the traction of his feet.

Float on: Bolt barely touches the ground when during his sprints

If it is possible for a man to glide, to skim across the surface at the Olympic Stadium, that is what Bolt achieved. He stopped running flat out before he had left the bend, completing the race a blur of pure confidence. Bolt knows his place at these Games, and it is in front, in charge, a London street ahead of the rest.

On Thursday night he will attempt to create his masterpiece. Just before nine o’clock Bolt will set out to run a race so powerful, so extraordinary, so unprecedented that in sporting terms it will make the world spin. With each stride Bolt will be  tearing a page, a name, an Olympiad, from the history book. 

No predecessor, from Walter Tewkesbury, the first gold medallist in Athens in 1896 to Shawn Crawford in the same city in 2004, got to keep that precious gold medal over 200m. After last night’s semi-final, despite recording the fifth-fastest qualifying time, Bolt is now the 6-1 on favourite to do just that.

This is Bolt’s Olympics, every bit as much as in Beijing. When the parochial thrill of the British medal haul has faded, the name that will leap from the page is his. Bolt has redefined his event, and not just through size. Plenty of people are tall, but they cannot run like Bolt.

And his is the hardest event, for the entire world is his rival. Not everybody can afford golf clubs or a sailboat, not every country has access to a velodrome or the technology required to match British cycling; but each free and able-bodied person in the world is at liberty to try to run as fast as he can. Everybody can have a crack at being Usain Bolt. And only one man is.

Centre of attention: Everyone at the Olympic Stadium (above and below) wants a memory of Bolt

 London, but the same cannot be said of northern Jamaica, where large swathes missed the sporting highlight of the year.

So what happened? At Waldensia Primary, a small girl also triumphed. 

Best foot forward: Bolt is preparing to dazzle the world with another 200m title

She produced a pink battery-operated transistor radio and her friends gathered around that instead. They heard, rather than saw, Bolt become the fastest man in Olympic history and then, in pictures that have gone around the world via Skype, they shared his joy with whooping, cheering, table-slapping abandon. And that was just the adults.

Bolt brings happiness, no doubt of that. His great rival Yohan Blake, who recorded the fastest time in the semi-finals, although he almost slowed to the point of madness in the last 20m, tries to match his showmanship, but he is a young man and always looks slightly  self-conscious in his posturing. Bolt acts as if born to it.

For a man said to be scared stiff of disqualification through false-start, a fate that befell him at the World Championships last year, he showed little sign of it at the start here, body-popping to the music before settling down in the blocks. 

This is an athlete who tweeted a picture of his 3am companions having won the 100m: the Swedish women's handball team. He thinks British footballers — and he is perfectly serious in angling for a trial at  Manchester United, by the way — are encouraged to settle down too early. Don’t tell Sir Alex Ferguson.

Now the stage is set. Bolt is the marquee name of these Games, and legitimately, too. There is much to celebrate in his athletic feats, no matter that the sport lends itself to doubt and suspicion. A man wins Olympic gold with his laces undone, teasing the crowd, and people tend to ask questions.

Stroll in the park: Bolt made light work of his semi-final, cruising home in the final stages