Two ‘Disgraced’ Sprinters Have Broken Record Usain Bolt Never Achieved
Despite breaking the 100 metre, 200 metre and 4x100m relay world records during his athletics career, Usain Bolt never achieved a historic feat that two other sprinters have.
Bolt, 39, is still the fastest man of all time, having broken both the 100m (9.58 seconds) and 200m (19.19 seconds) at the 2009 World Athletics Championships in Berlin, Germany.
The eight-time Olympic gold medallist was also part of the Jamaican team, which broke the 4x100m relay record (36.84 seconds) at the London 2012 Olympics alongside Nesta Carter, Yohan Blake and Michael Frater.
To add to the ‘traditional’ world records, the 39-year-old also holds several unofficial world records, including the 150m world record set at the 2009 Great City Games in Manchester.
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The list of achievements and records associated with Bolt is seemingly endless. However, one record he did not achieve was running a time of sub-9.80 seconds twice in the same day.
There is no record of Bolt running twice in one day, while his former Jamaica teammate, Asafa Powell, and American Fred Kerley did, in fact, clock two separate times less than 9.80 seconds on the same day.
First, on September 9, 2007, Powell set a then-world record of 9.74 seconds in the heats of the IAAF Grand Prix in Rieti, Italy, before clocking a time of 9.78 seconds in the final of the event later that day.
Powell was part of the Jamaican team which won the 4x100m gold at the Rio 2016 Olympics.
The 42-year-old twice broke the 100m world record in 2005 and 2007, but his career was ultimately overshadowed when he received an 18-month ban – later reduced to six months on appeal by the Court of Arbitration for Sport - for failing a drugs test in 2014.
The second sprinter to clock two times less than 9.80s on the same day was American Kerley, who achieved times of 9.76 seconds and 9.77 seconds in the semi-finals and final of the 2022 USA Track and Field Championships in Eugene on June 24, 2022.
Kerley won the World Championships with a time of 9.86 seconds later that year, but has since signed up to the hugely controversial Enhanced Games.
The event allows athletes to take banned performance-enhancing drugs under medical supervision.
His decision came just weeks after he received a provisional suspension from the Athletics Integrity Unit for missing three doping tests over a 12-month period.
The first edition of the Enhanced Games is set to take place in Las Vegas in 2026, with each event awarded a total prize purse of $500,000. Athletes will also receive $1 million if they break world records.
Topics: Usain Bolt, Athletics
Luke Davies