Usain Bolt made his comeback to the world of track and field on Sunday night and, for a moment, it was like the good old days. There was his trademark To Da World pose before the 100m finals. The cheers and adulation of 60,000 fans in Tokyo’s National Stadium. A reminder of glories past.
The 39-year-old Jamaican had not watched athletics at all since retiring in 2017 until seeing Melissa Jefferson-Wooden and Oblique Seville win gold. And, as he also admitted, he now spends his time streaming movies and building Lego – and even gets out of breath when he walks up stairs.
However, when asked why the new crop of sprinters is not as quick as his generation, despite the advances in spike and track technology, Bolt’s competitive instincts fired back to life. “You want the real answer? We’re just more talented,” he said. “That’s all I’m saying. Of course, it shows when it comes to the men. You can see the women are different. They’re running faster times and faster times. So it shows – it has to be the talent.”
Bolt, who won eight Olympic gold medals and 11 world titles, still holds three world records – 9.58sec in the 100m, 19.19 in the 200m and 36.84 in the 4×100m relay – that stand tall. The athletes he used to beat – including Tyson Gay, Yohan Blake, Asafa Powell and Justin Gatlin – were also quicker than the cream of the 2025 generation. Indeed, no one has broken 9.70 since the Lausanne Diamond League meeting that followed London 2012.
While Gay, Blake, Powell and Gatlin were all banned at various stages for doping offences, Bolt said the fact that Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce improved her times once the super spikes arrived showed that talent was key. “You have Shelly, who has got the new spikes, and she ran faster. So it’s just the talent. We’re just way more talented men over that time. It shows if you look at it.”
Bolt also urged track and field athletes to show more of themselves to engage with casual fans. “It’s the personality,” he said. “I think a lot of people try to be fun but it comes off different. It’s just having a good time. If you try too hard, it’s not going to be the same.”
He also pointed to a moment at the 2012 Olympic Games, when he was the flag bearer for Jamaica, and saw Queen Elizabeth II at the opening ceremony. “When I was in London, I knew the queen, so I waved,” he said. “I tried to engage with fans and that’s why they gravitated to it.”
Bolt, who is in Tokyo to promote the new World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest next year, has always had an extraordinary ability to connect with people around the world. But these days he confessed to a more sedentary lifestyle at home.
Asked what he did on a typical day, he replied: “Well normally, I wake up just in time to see the kids off to school, and then it depends on what I have to do. If I have nothing to do, I just chill out. I might work out sometimes if I’m in a good mood. I just watch some series and chill until the kids come home.
“I spend some time with them, hang out, until they start annoying me then I leave. And then afterwards, I just stay at home and watch movies or I’m into Lego now, so I do Lego.”
Bolt, who ruptured an achilles last year, said he no longer runs. “No, I mostly do gym workouts. I’m not a fan, but I think now that I’ve been out for a while I have to actually start running. Because when I walk up stairs I get out of breath. I think when I start working on it fully again, I will probably have to do some laps just to get my breathing right.”
However, he insisted that watching track and field again had made him want to bring his children, Olympia Lightning Bolt, five, and his twin sons, Saint Leo and Thunder Bolt, four, to the world championships in Beijing in two years’ time.
That, of course, is where his legend began at the 2008 Olympics. “I’m excited because I get to bring my kids and I can tell them: ‘Listen, this is where it all happened.’ I’ve shown my kids videos and stuff like that. They’ll be six and seven, and they’ll kind of understand the moment, and I can explain to them what their dad has done over the years.”
