‘Unfathomable: Usain Bolt has been shamed in Paris
Jamaican legend Usain Bolt would be shaking his head watching the Paris Olympics as the foundations he built crumble before our eyes.
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Usain Bolt is watching his legacy burn to the ground. The Jamaican sprinting empire has fallen.
The Carribean nation so celebrated as the world’s factory of running freaks is suffering its worst athletics result in recent memory.
With only two medal chances left in the sprinting events (women’s 4x100m relay and the women’s 100m hurdles), the fastest country on Earth is a title that America now owns.
America’s haul of track field medals stands at nine gold, 10 silver and eight bronze - with no other country winning more than two golds.
Jamaica has just two track medals — Kishane Thompson’s desperately unlucky silver medal in the 100m and Rasheed Broadbell’s bronze in the 110m hurdles.
The lightning bolt must be shaking his head.
Thompson’s silver is the only medal in the men’s 100m and 200m that Jamaica’s sprinters have won since Bolt’s superhuman career ended at the Rio Olympics in 2016.
The sudden collapse is even more notable among Jamaica’s seemingly invincible female sprinters.
Heading into Paris, Jamaica had won four consecutive gold medals in the 100m, and taken 10 out of a possible 12 medals since Beijing in 2008.
In the women’s 200m, Jamaica had also won four of the previous five gold medals, with Elaine Thompson-Herah going back to back in Rio and Tokyo.
They didn’t medal in either event in Paris. The house that Bolt, Shelley-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Thompson-Herah built is crumbling.
And there is plenty of evidence to show it won’t be rebuilt.
The Jamaican athletics team has been a basket case.
For the first time since Athens in 2004, Jamaica will not be part of the men’s 4x100m final. Almost unfathomable.
Their heat time of 38.45, a season’s best for the team, was slower than Australia’s time of 38.12 and 10 of the 15 other countries who took part.
Sloppy baton changes cost the Jamaicans dearly. It was amateur hour.
Earlier, sprint queens Thompson-Herah, Shericka Jackson and Fraser-Pryce, all pulled out of their Olympic sprints at short notice. The trio swept the podium in the 100m in Tokyo.
The team that won 15 of the 24 Olympic medals in the women’s 100 and 200 between 2008 and 2021 will go home with none this year. It will mark the first time since 1976 the country hasn’t won a women’s medal in either of those events.
Even Thompson’s cruel silver medal in the 100m final where he missed out by just five-thousandths of a second to American Noah Lyles has sparked debate about his fatal lunge to the line where his torso was slightly concave compared to Lyles’ shoulder charge.
The most concerning aspect is what is happening away from the Stade de France.
Nine-time national champion Danniel Thomas-Dodd vented her frustrations publicly, slamming Jamaican officials for leaving her to compete in Paris without her coach.
“It is hard to deal with,” she said.
“Field events do not get support in Jamaica, and the only gold medal we have so far has come from field events. We don’t get the respect. We don’t get the support that we need to ensure that we throwers and field event athletes in general in Jamaica have everything we need to compete at our best.
“Two and a half weeks without a coach because they didn’t deem me important enough to give me that privilege, and my coach is not just my coach, he is a part of my preparation, he is my support. Two and a half weeks in the village without being able to see him until today has been very frustrating.”
Jamaican sprint legend Asafa Powell - Bolt’s first serious rival and former 100m world record holder - can see the country rising from its 2024 ashes.
There aren’t many that will share his optimism.
“I know the world is used to Jamaica winning, and Jamaica always celebrating,” he said.
“But believe me, it’s going to happen again.
“I think people appreciate us more when they see a down period like this.
“We will see Jamaica celebrating again. Jamaicans have the best celebration so the world wants to see it.”
It seems a long time since Bolt was the biggest superstar in world sport, and it will feel even longer by the time Jamaica runs at the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
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Originally published as ‘Unfathomable: Usain Bolt has been shamed in Paris
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