Aw, Shut up about Usain Bolt already!

I am going to state a view a lot of people who are not Jamaican are secretly harboring but don’t have the guts to air:

I wasn’t wishing him well, didn’t like it one bit when Usain Bolt won the 200m sprint yesterday.I was inwardly hoping that Yohan Blake or, better still, the American in the final line-up of that race upset the odds and saved us from the inevitable crass and unclassy preening and prancing that would ensue if Bolt won.

“Every time a friend succeeds, I did a little” Gore Vidal

So, you can imagine my dismay when not only did Bolt win but Jamaica made it a 1-2-3! How bloody galling.

It was bad enough in 2008 when we had to put up with the showy lad from Jamaica who broke records even though he was running as though it was a walk in the park to him. That bolt thing especially irritated me, tipping me firmly into the haters’ camp. I mean, who did this boy think he was, coming on to our screens, all 6’5″ of him, and acting as though he owned the track plus everyone who was watching?

Whatever happened to the days of  the great Carl Lewis, who won and won, and didn’t make silly lightning bolt signs about it? Or of Michael Johnson, he who ran as though he had a ramrod metal bar stuck in his behind but still broke the 400m record in 1999, a record that still stands 13 years later? And both those great athletes kept a clean drugs sheet, mind.

Not that a clean sheet means anything in this day and age when athletes are clearly more savvy than the fuddy daddies at the IOC (remember Marion Jones, who never failed a drugs test in competition?) with their snotty but clearly plodding drugs testing methods which are quite obviously steps behind the athletes’ conniving and scheming.

Oh, go away! Jamaica’s 200m 1-2-3 winners

So, I am (again secretly) hoping that Usain Bolt is eventually tripped up by his own hubris just as happened with Marion Jones who eventually came a-cropper and lived to see her results on the track crumble into a heap of ignominy. And I know I have good reason to hope; I have just read somewhere that the man who came second to Usain Bolt, Yohan Blake, failed a drugs test in 2009.

So, I am going to hope that whatever these men are taking will eventually come to light, perhaps when their trainer turns whistleblower, and they will be disgraced. The sooner the better, so that Bolt and his posse crawl back into their homophobic Jamaican backwater where they belong.

And did you hear that Bolt had the temerity to speak about Carl Lewis in disparaging terms? What a bloody cheek! The reason you are feted around the world, you …  boy … is Carl Lewis who won nine gold medals in various disciplines and got the world firmly hooked on athletics. If it hadn’t been for Carl Lewis showing that track and field could be exciting, you would be broke despite the records you are breaking. Performance-wise, too, you have some records to your name but you can’t touch Carl Lewis. For that you will have to start learning how to do the long jump and then carry yourself with class and dignity off and on the field after you win.

So, how come all these people are groveling at the seemingly astonishing feats of this Bolt character?

Simple. They are blind,  fawning, sycophants who are trying to get a life vicariously through what seems to be Bolt’s genius. They are desperate to believe that a human being can run that fast so easily, but deep down they know it is not possible for anyone to outrun everyone so effortlessly without being aided by some sort of elixir. So, what do they do? They exaggerate their praise of Bolt in the hope that if they scream it loud enough to their fellow boot-lickers, the suspicion that he can’t be clean will pale into non-existence.

Now, let me get up and switch off my television. This incessant gushing about Usain Bolt by the BBC is about to drive me nuts.

Tss!

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