Dubai: Irrespective of who wins how many gold medals and who breaks a world record at the ongoing IAAF World Championships at Daegu, the biggest story will still be the shock disqualification of Jamaican sprint king Usain Bolt in the men's 100m final.
The reigning champion jumped the gun prompting critics to immediately call for a modification to the one-false-start-disqualification rule.
The man himself seems to have gotten over the disappointment and is already looking ahead to the 200m heat on Friday, but one can't help recall an incident that happened about two years ago at the last world championships in Berlin where Bolt won three gold medals and broke his own world mark in the 100m and 200m.
Not many, though, are likely to remember the 100m semi-finals where he had a false start, his first in a major competition. It was very unusual for the Jamaican who was a notorious slow starter at that time, although ironically, he has since been working on being faster off the blocks. The rules were different then and he had another chance to make the final and subsequently won gold and shattered his own world mark.
During an exclusive interview to XPRESS following the Berlin meet, Bolt was asked about the new rule which was ratifed during the event and due to take effect from January 1, 2010.
"A lot of people are against it, but it does not really matter to me," he had said.
How those words came back to haunt him on Sunday night.
It was a race laid out on a platter given that the only two men on the planet capable of pushing him were both missing through injury. "I respect all my opponents and certainly Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay can push me in every race we run together," he had said in that interview.
In the end, despite having virtually jogged through his two heats and gone through his usual showboating routine before the final, Bolt proved he is human after all, supremely talented, but human nevertheless.
