45 Fun Facts About Usain Bolt

What is Bolt's 100 m world record, set in 2009?

9.58 took more than a tenth of a second off his own year-old record; Tyson Gay ran 9.71 in the same final, then the third-fastest time ever, and was still well beaten.

What is Bolt's 200 m world record, also set in 2009?

19.19 took 0.11 off the mark he had set at the Beijing Olympics; Shawn Crawford, the 2004 Olympic champion, trailed in fourth and said it felt like being in a video game.

Bolt completed his third straight Olympic 100 m and 200 m double at the Games in which city?

Rio in 2016 made it three Games running, which no other sprinter has done; weeks earlier a hamstring tear had forced him out of Jamaica's trials and he needed a medical exemption to be picked.

In which small Jamaican town was Bolt born on 21 August 1986?

Sherwood Content, a village in rural Trelawny, lost him at 16: Jamaica's prime minister personally arranged a house in Kingston so that he could train with the national coaches.

A coach in which sport at Bolt's high school first urged him to try athletics?

Cricket was his first love: he was a fast bowler who wanted to be the next Courtney Walsh, until his coach saw him sprint and sent him to the track.

Police held the schoolboy Bolt over which prank at the CARIFTA Trials?

Hiding in a van before his final got him held by a policeman and his coach blamed by the local community; Bolt still went on to set championship records at the CARIFTA Games.

What did a nervous 15-year-old Bolt do before winning the 2002 World Junior 200 m?

Put his shoes on the wrong feet: he noticed in time, won in front of his home crowd in Kingston, and says the fright cured him of pre-race nerves for good.

Which part of a 100 m race did the 6 ft 5 in Bolt call his weak point?

The start: he said he had to work hard on leaving the blocks, and his coach cited that sluggish getaway when resisting his wish to race the 100 m at all.

In a 2012 broadband advert, Bolt impersonated which British tycoon?

Richard Branson was the target: Bolt took over the Virgin founder's office and put on his trademark goatee to sell the idea of broadband as fast as a sprinter.

At 17, Bolt became the first junior in history to run what?

A sub-20 200 m: his 19.93 at the 2004 CARIFTA Games broke the world junior record; US colleges offered him scholarships, and he turned them all down to stay and train in Jamaica.

Which coach took Bolt on after the 2004 Olympics and guided him to all his world records?

Glen Mills first wanted him to step up in distance, and only let him try the 100 m after Bolt met his challenge of breaking the Jamaican 200 m record.

At the Athens 2004 Olympics, his Games debut, how did Bolt fare in the 200 m?

Eliminated in round one: just turned 18 and carrying a leg injury, he ran 21.05 and went home, the last time he left an Olympics without a gold medal.

Whose 36-year-old Jamaican 200 m record did Bolt break in 2007 to earn the right to run the 100 m?

Don Quarrie, the 1976 Olympic champion, was the bend runner Bolt had studied and admired; Bolt's 19.75 took 0.11 seconds off a national record Quarrie had held for 36 years.

Where did Bolt set his first 100 m world record, 9.72, on 31 May 2008?

Icahn Stadium, New York, saw it on a rain-soaked track in what was only his fifth serious 100 m race, an event his coach had not wanted him to run at all.

Whose 100 m world record of 9.74 did Bolt take in 2008?

Asafa Powell had set the 9.74 record in Rieti, Italy, in September 2007; the fellow Jamaican later ran the anchor leg on Bolt's Beijing 2008 relay team.

Which IOC president rebuked Bolt for his conduct at the Beijing 100 m finish?

Jacques Rogge said Bolt should show more respect for his rivals; Bolt insisted he was just happy, though he later admitted the rebuke made him worry he had overdone it.

Whose 200 m world record of 19.32, set at Atlanta 1996, did Bolt break in Beijing?

Michael Johnson was one of Bolt's boyhood idols, and his 19.32 had stood for 12 years; Bolt took two hundredths off it despite running into a headwind.

Bolt's Beijing double made him the first man to hold both sprint world records since what became mandatory?

Fully automatic timing became compulsory for records in 1977, ending hand-timed marks that flattered sprinters by roughly a quarter of a second.

Why was Jamaica stripped of its Beijing 2008 sprint relay gold in 2017?

A teammate's retest was positive: Nesta Carter's frozen 2008 sample showed a banned stimulant when reanalysed, so the whole relay team lost its golds and Bolt's sweep of three golds at three straight Games was gone.

Bolt's 2009 world records came in the Berlin stadium where which American sprinter had become a legend decades earlier?

Jesse Owens won four golds there in 1936; Bolt arrived 73 years later only months after a car crash, claiming to be just 85% fit, and broke both sprint world records.

What gift did the host city's mayor give Bolt after the 2009 World Championships?

A three-ton section of the old Wall, 12 feet high, came from Berlin's mayor Klaus Wowereit, who said Bolt had shown that 'one can tear down walls that had been considered as insurmountable'.

What happened to Bolt in the 2011 world 100 m final in Daegu?

He was disqualified for a false start under the one-strike rule brought in the year before; days later he was back to win the 200 m and anchor Jamaica to a relay world record.

Which training partner of Bolt won the world 100 m title in Daegu?

Yohan Blake won the Daegu final in 9.92, then beat Bolt over both sprints at the 2012 Jamaican trials, only to finish second to him in both at the London Olympics.

After anchoring Jamaica to a relay world record at London 2012, Bolt copied which British runner's celebration?

Mo Farah's 'Mobot' got the tribute: Bolt had just watched his friend win the 5,000 m, made the M sign as he crossed the line in 36.84, and later joined him on the podium to swap poses.

Which American rival did Bolt beat by one hundredth of a second for the 2015 world 100 m title?

Justin Gatlin arrived on a 28-race unbeaten run and ran 9.77 in his semi-final, but faltered in the last strides of the final and Bolt came past, 9.79 to 9.80.

Which rival shared a laugh with Bolt as they finished a 2016 Olympic 200 m semi-final?

Andre De Grasse sprinted up to Bolt's shoulder hoping to tire him before the final; they crossed the line chatting and laughing, and the next day Bolt beat the Canadian to gold.

Where did Bolt finish in his final individual race, the 100 m at the 2017 World Championships in London?

Third in 9.95, behind two Americans: it was the only Olympic or world 100 m final that Bolt ever ran and lost.

How did Bolt's very last race, the 2017 World Championship 4 × 100 m relay final, end?

He pulled up injured with cramp in his hamstring on the anchor leg as Great Britain won; minutes later he got to his feet and limped across the line with his team-mates' help.

In 2013, Bolt became a playable character in which hit mobile game?

Temple Run 2 sold him as an extra character in Jamaica's yellow and green, with a special power to surge ahead at 'record-breaking pace'; a limited-time offer, he was later made permanent.

In 2009, aged 23, Bolt was admitted to which of his country's national orders?

The Order of Jamaica made him, at 23, its youngest member to that date and gave him the title 'The Honourable'; around the same time a highway was renamed after him.

Bolt's signature "lightning bolt" pose is also known by what Jamaican name?

To di world started out as a Jamaican dancehall move; Bolt made it his signature, and in 2018 he even used it to celebrate his first goals as a trial footballer.

Bolt's autobiography revealed that his scoliosis has what effect?

A right leg half an inch shorter than the left is the result of his curved spine; he says the back trouble it caused, not partying, lay behind the injuries of his early career.

Which Premier League club has Bolt repeatedly said he dreams of playing for?

Manchester United have been his club since childhood; in 2018 he finally got to play at Old Trafford, captaining a World XI in the Soccer Aid charity match.

In 2018 Bolt trained with, and was offered a contract by, which Australian A-League club?

Bolt began training with the Central Coast Mariners on his 32nd birthday in August 2018, scored twice in a friendly, and left in November after contract talks; Perth Glory's Andy Keogh likened his first touch to 'a trampoline'.

In 2018, Bolt played a friendly as a forward for Strømsgodset, a football club in which country?

Norway's Strømsgodset gave him 20 minutes up front against the national under-19 side, which won 1–0; that year he also trained with Borussia Dortmund.

Which sportswear brand signed Bolt after his 2002 world junior title?

Puma has backed him ever since, into retirement. Bolt, for his part, has insisted that adverts featuring him be filmed in Jamaica by Jamaican crews, to bring work and exposure to the island.

Bolt Mobility, the company Bolt co-founded in 2018, launched what kind of product?

Electric scooters for hire were its business from 2018; in 2022 it shut down almost overnight, abandoning its vehicles on the streets of several US cities.

Roughly how much was left of Usain Bolt's $12 million-plus retirement account after the 2023 Kingston fraud?

$12,000 was all that showed in an account that had held about $12.8 million at Kingston's Stocks and Securities; a former employee of the firm was later charged with fraud.

What did Bolt and his partner Kasi Bennett name their first daughter, born in May 2020?

Olympia Lightning was born on 17 May 2020, and the first the public heard of it was a congratulatory tweet from Jamaica's prime minister.

Which video game series did Bolt say he stayed up late playing online, unable to help himself?

Call of Duty kept him up at night, he admitted: 'I stay up late, I can't help it'; online he hid behind a gamer tag and kept off the microphone, so opponents had no idea who they were shooting at.

Which high school did Bolt attend when his sprinting talent was first spotted?

William Knibb Memorial High School, in his home parish of Trelawny, is where coach Pablo McNeil took him on, despite a pupil who preferred practical jokes to training.

Bolt ran an indoor 100 m world best in 2014 under the roof of a Euro 2012 stadium in which city?

Warsaw's National Stadium shut its retractable roof for the meeting, so Bolt's 9.98 counted as an indoor best, beating a mark Frankie Fredericks had held since 1996.

What did Bolt and Kasi Bennett name the twins they announced in June 2021?

Thunder and Saint Leo were announced to the world on Father's Day 2021; Saint Leo repeats Bolt's own middle name, St. Leo.

Which Kingston track club was Bolt's training base throughout his record-breaking years?

Racers Track Club, based at the University of the West Indies, was set up by his coach with the stated aim of producing more world champions than any other club.

What is the title of the 2016 documentary that follows Bolt to his final Olympics?

I Am Bolt, made by the brothers Benjamin and Gabe Turner, trails him from an injury-hit 2015 to his last Olympic podium; Faster Than Lightning was his autobiography.