London: Usain Bolt has been conspicuously casting around for a successor at the Rio Olympics. First he embraced Wayde van Niekirk, fresh from a staggering 400 metres world record of 43.03 seconds, telling the young South African that he thought the future of track and field was in safe hands.
Then, there was the moment of ‘bromance’ with Andre de Grasse, the former college sensation from Canada. Crossing the line in their 200m semi-final mere millimetres apart, they grinned at one another, as if in mutual recognition of a changing of the guard. Trouble is, Bolt, whose blistering final leg of the 4x100m relay put a suitably emphatic stamp on his Olympic career, has nobody to whom he can confidently pass the baton. His exit from the stage is an incalculable loss, and one only had to look at the stadium stands to see why.
For the three sessions that he raced in finals, they were full, crackling with energy and anticipation. On Bolt-free evenings, it was a different story, with threadbare crowds creating what one American commentator described as a “giant buzz-kill”. These swathes of vacant seats were explained not by cynicism about a vast doping conspiracy, but by the fact that most people regarded a night with Bolt as the only ticket worth buying.
In his native Jamaica, the retirement of Bolt, as central a figure to national identity as Bob Marley, is felt especially acutely. “The absence of Usain Bolt will not only leave a void in Jamaica, it will leave a void in the entire track and field fraternity,” says Maurice Wilson, technical director of the Jamaican Olympic team.
There will, in time, be another totemic athlete. As Wilson puts it: “We have seen different eras of greats, from Jesse Owens to Donald Quarrie, Carl Lewis to Michael Johnson. It is a phase, and in the future we will have another dominant force.” But the sport is lurching towards one of those precarious periods of interregnum, where nobody can be quite sure what is coming next.
In the 200m final in Rio, not one runner besides Bolt broke 20 seconds. Where were the young gunslingers, ready to fill the breach? France’s Christophe Lemaitre, the bronze medallist, had just turned 26, an age by which Bolt was arguably already past his peak. Athletics can ill afford, at a point when public trust in its integrity has ebbed away to an alarming degree, to wait too long for another saviour.
It is futile even pretending, though, that anybody with Bolt’s transcendence will emerge for a generation or more. His ‘triple-triple’ of Olympic sprint titles - nine finals, nine gold medals - stands as a feat for the ages. So, too, does his set of world records.
In looking for the next wave, there is no more logical place to start than his Jamaican homeland, the Caribbean sprint factory. For the strength in depth on the island remains, in this adjustment to a post-Bolt landscape, the envy of the world. At the Racers Grand Prix in Kingston in June, four men - Bolt, Nickel Ashmeade, Yohan Blake and Asafa Powell - all dipped under 10 seconds.
Even the ‘B’ race was won by Jason Livermore in a time of 10.03. Paul Francis, head of the track team at Jamaica’s University of Technology, explains: “That B race could have sufficed for a world class 100 anywhere else. This is the extent of talent available locally. Now it is just a matter of finding those who are able to force a way through to make it on the world stage.”
This is the complicated part. In athletics, as in so many sports, gifted juniors do not automatically blossom into world-beaters at the senior level. Sprinters reach maturity at different ages, and wunderkinds tend to be lavished with an indulgence that serves them badly later on. Those slower to develop, by contrast, are more disposed towards a strong work ethic.
Take Blake, aka ‘The Beast’, who is the second fastest man in history behind Bolt over both 100 and 200m. And yet he came only seventh in the 100 at world juniors in 2005 behind a certain Harry Aikines-Aryeetey, a precocious British sprinter who has flattered to deceive ever since.
The same danger lurks for Nigel Ellis, Jamaica’s next great hope. Ellis has been heralded for some time as the one to sustain Bolt’s legacy, so rapidly has he risen through junior ranks. At 19, he has even been signed by Puma, the same sportswear company that snaffled Bolt.
But events this summer have suggested reason for caution. At the world under-20 championships in Bydgoszcz, Poland, last month, Ellis managed only a bronze in the 200, in 20.63. When Bolt was only 18, he was running 19.93. Post-Bolt, the pressure upon Ellis and his ilk is intense.
“Sprinting is everything to us,” Wilson says. “Whenever there is a track and field event on the island, people will take time out from their jobs to watch it on big-screen TVs. And at global meetings, Jamaicans don’t like anything apart from gold. It’s extremely important to us when our athletes perform. It gives us an enormous sense of pride.”
Doubtless Bolt will be feted with the hero’s reception he deserves when he returns from Rio with his latest loot. But he, like anyone else who cares about his sport, will be aware that the search for a worthy heir has never been more urgent.
-The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2016
