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NO BOLT OUT OF THE BLUE: Usain Bolt did not appear suddenly this year as some people think. He became the youngest junior world champion in the 200m at the age of 15 in 2002 and set records in the next two world junior championships. -- PHOTO: AP
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KINGSTON - THE world's fastest man has decided to try to prove it at the Beijing Olympics.
After mulling for months, Jamaican Usain Bolt, who specialises in the 200 metres, will enter for that distance and the century sprint.
The 22-year-old has been in phenomenal form, setting a world 100m record of 9.72 seconds in New York in May and running the year's fastest 200m in 19.67sec in Athens three weeks ago.
But he had been considering running just the 200m, on the advice of his coach, Glen Mills.
Not any more.
'Coach confirmed that I will run both events in the Olympic Games,' said Bolt. 'I am feeling good.'
His presence makes the men's 100m one of the most anticipated finals of the Games.
It will be a showdown featuring the world record-holder (Bolt), former world record holder (Jamaican Asafa Powell) and reigning world champion (American Tyson Gay).
Recent months have jumbled track's pecking order.
Gay ran a wind-aided 9.68sec in the 100m at the United States' trials in Eugene early last month, but pulled out of the 200m after suffering a muscle cramp.
His spokesman insisted yesterday that his recovery was going well and expected him to be ready.
Powell, meanwhile, fell into the background early this summer while recovering from hamstring problems, but resurfaced two weeks ago when he beat Bolt in a 100m race in Stockholm, finishing in 9.88sec to Bolt's 9.89.
Powell's coach Stephen Francis said: 'It's going to take a superhuman effort to beat him.'
Bolt, if he succeeds in his quest for the double, would be the ninth athlete to achieve the feat.
The last man was Carl Lewis, who triumphed on home soil at the 1984 Los Angeles Games.
Not bad for Bolt, who began running the 100m competitively only last year.
'He can be the very best athlete in the history of track and field,' said Donovan Bailey, the Jamaica-born, Canada-raised champion who won gold in the 100m at the 1996 Atlanta Games.
'I think he can run a 19-flat in the 200m. There's almost nothing that is out of the question with this young man.'
Bolt's story is not only about a talented athlete who rose from teenage prodigy to world fame.
It is also of a country that, despite its modest size and a population of just 2.65 million, consistently produces some of the world's best sprinters - and manages to do it while largely avoiding the stain from the drug scandals that have plagued the sport.
'There's a natural ability - I guess it comes out of the Jamaican spirit,' said Olivia Grange, Jamaica's Minister of Information, Culture, Youth and Sports. 'I don't know - maybe it's in the water.'
In addition to Bolt and Powell - who own the five fastest recognised 100m times in history - the four fastest women in the 200m this year are Jamaicans, as are four of the top six in the 100m.
In the 100m women's final at the Jamaican Olympic trials, reigning world champion Veronica Campbell-Brown ran what was then a season-best 10.88sec.
Yet she still finished fourth, failing to qualify for the Olympics at the distance.
It was the fastest women's 100m race in history.
All told, Jamaicans have won 42 Olympic medals, all but one of them in track and field.
'People see running as a way out of tough challenges and living conditions - poverty, if you want to use that word,' said Grace Jackson, silver medallist in the 200m at the 1988 Seoul Games and now a top Jamaican track and field official.
'That's what it was to me.'
Bolt's first love, however, was cricket, which the kids played in the road with a homemade wicket and a tennis ball.
But, by age 10, he was sprinting for his primary school team - and by age 12, his mother says, 'he was beating everybody'.
Those who say Bolt came out of nowhere this year are neither Jamaicans nor track aficionados.
In 2002, at age 15, he won national high school titles in the 200 and 400m, and then became the youngest world junior champion in history, winning the 200m a month shy of his 16th birthday.
At each of the next two world junior championships, he set records.
Now he will be hoping to do the same in Beijing.
ASSOCIATED PRESS, LOS ANGELES TIMES
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