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| Jamaica's Usain Bolt celebrates after winning the men’s 100m final at the World Athletics Championships at the Bird's Nest stadium in Beijing, Sunday, Aug. 23, 2015. |
BEIJING (AP) -- A heart-stopper. A lean at the line. A next-to-nothing margin over a more-than-game challenger.
Sure,
for Usain Bolt, the winning result, the bow-and-arrow victory
celebration and even the setting may have been the same as 2008. But the
show he put on Sunday in a .01-second victory over Justin Gatlin at the
Bird's Nest was something very different.
Bolt crossed the line in 9.79 seconds - pedestrian by his standards. Yet it very well may have been his greatest race ever.
"My
coach said, `You'll have to run 100 meters if you're going to win the
race,'" Bolt said after capturing his record ninth career gold medal at
world championships. "So I ran 100 meters."
The
29-year-old Jamaican came in hurting and anything but race ready - a
far cry from seven years ago, when he put his stamp on the Beijing
Olympics in the same stadium by slowing down and bringing his hands out
to his side to start the celebration with 20 meters left. Even with
that, he crossed the line in a then-world-record time of 9.69 seconds.
By
now, that's ancient history, and the proof was in the results from the
last two years. Gatlin has been dominating the sprint game, while Bolt
has spent more time rehabbing than racing.
The
problems carried right into Sunday. Bolt's semifinal run - normally a
stress-free jog - turned dicey when he stumbled on his fifth step out of
the starting block. He was in sixth place more than halfway through and
had to push to beat out Trayvon Bromell.
In
the next semifinal race, Gatlin breezed, just as he had the night before
in the heats. Set against each other, those performances turned Gatlin
into the betting favorite, and who could argue?
And
so, the stakes were set: The world-record holder and track's happy
warrior against a twice-convicted doper, who also won the 100 at the
2004 Olympics and the world championships in 2005.
That
Gatlin burst from the blocks faster was no surprise; Bolt was his
typically slow self in unfurling his 6-foot-5 frame from the start.
That
Gatlin was winning at the halfway point wasn't too shocking, either.
"The best part of my race is usually the end," Bolt said.
At 80 meters, the math started changing. Bolt drew to within a step but Gatlin was holding him off.
Then,
with about 15 meters left, Gatlin over-strided, then did it again, then
started leaning toward the line. Bolt stayed upright, crossed with a
big kick and with his chest pushed forward. A sliver of space for a man
who wins by body lengths.
After eyeing the
scoreboard, Bolt punched his right fist down and kicked his left leg up,
a clearly unchoreographed celebration for a man who often starts
planning them while the race is still going. It was the closest 100
final at the worlds since 2003, when Kim Collins edged Darrel Brown by
.01.
"At the end of the day, I guess I would say I gave the race away the last five meters," Gatlin said.
A
bitter pill for the 33-year-old ex-champ, who handled it with his
typical class, but still gets asked about his doping past no matter what
the result.
"He served his suspension, and
all of a sudden, self-righteous people who've never done anything wrong
in their lives want to vilify him," said Gatlin's agent, Renaldo
Nehemiah.
Also winning gold medals Sunday were
Jessica Ennis-Hill of Britain in the heptathlon, Joe Kovacs of the
United States in the shot put and Pawel Fajdek of Poland in the hammer
throw.
Gatlin will presumably get another
chance at gold, and another chance at Bolt, on Thursday in the 200-meter
final - the race Bolt has always called his favorite.
No
matter how it goes, there figures to be some drama and tension between
these two over the next 11 1/2 months, as the lead-in to the Olympics in
Rio de Janeiro heats up.
In Rio, Bolt will
try to make it 3 for 3 at the Olympics in the 100, 200 and the 4x100
relay. He'll go there having proven something that most long-time
champions have to prove sooner or later: That he could win a close one
when he wasn't close to his best and his opponent was.
"Ask
any athlete, and they'll tell you, if you start doubting yourself,
you've already lost," Bolt said. "I never started doubting myself. I
just tried to put together a race."
He did.
And
so, the final photo taken on the track looked like so many others that
Bolt's taken over the years: The World's Fastest Man holding that long,
languid bow-and-arrow pose - smiling, playing to the crowd.
What a race.
"I
was screaming. I was screaming because I didn't know what was going to
happen," Bolt's father, Wellesley, said after a harrowing night in the
stands. "But we know Usain. He's a very stubborn man and he didn't give
up."
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