Usain Bolt, here with Prince Harry, is not happy with the new starting blocks
LONDON, England ● The world’s fastest man, Usain Bolt, sent a tremor through the Olympic world when he declared that he did not like the new starting blocks that have been designed for the London Games.
The official Games timing provider, Omega, redesigned the starting blocks for London and they have been introduced at all Diamond League meets this year to give the sprinters a chance to adjust to them before the Games.
But after three races using them, the man whose voice is heard loudest in his sport spoke out against the new design.
“Personally, I think they need to go back to the old blocks,” the 195cm-tall Bolt said.
“The new ones are a bit too short for me. I am a UK shoe size 13 so my feet are big and I can’t get my blocks set the way they normally are. I’m guessing where they should go. I got it good in Rome but not here.
“My reaction time was good, but when I came out of the blocks the execution was not. I wasn’t as comfortable as I should have been. The first 30m wasn’t as good as it should have been. Asafa (Powell) got into his stride much faster than me, but the good thing is I still got out and ran past him.”
Bolt has produced the two fastest times in the world this year (9.76sec in Rome last week and 9.79sec in Oslo yesterday) using the blocks, but his dissatisfaction with them will be noted by the powers-that-be.
“I think they really need to look into the blocks, because they are not really so comfortable for me,” the Olympic 100m and 200m champion said.
“I hope they adjust them or something. I am not hot on those blocks right now.”
Omega Timing did a media briefing on the new blocks at the London Olympic stadium a month ago, where the company’s experts explained that the new blocks measured false starts more accurately because they used electronic rather than mechanical parts.
The company also took the opportunity to redesign the blocks with a thinner central bar (from 80mm down to 50mm) between wider footrests, which were supposed to give athletes a greater range of positions in which to start.
Omega said this would particularly assist smaller female athletes, many of whom preferred to start with their feet closer together than the old blocks allowed. But it appears to have had the opposite effect on the biggest man in the sprinting world, Bolt.
The obvious solution for Omega would be to express-post a set of the new blocks to Bolt in Jamaica so he can use them in training and adjust to them for the Olympics, although he’s in no hurry to try them again.
He said one of the reasons he had no concerns about earning his place in the Jamaican team at their hotly contested Olympic trials later this month was because the new blocks would not be used there.
The other reason is that he’s “in good nick”, after maintaining his ascendancy over former world record-holder and fellow Jamaican Powell yesterday.
Bolt was made to work harder than he has for a long time to earn his victory, after Powell made a superior start and led the race until 70m.
The 200m man used his greater endurance to overhaul his rival and claim the victory but he only won by half a metre as Powell produced his fastest race of the year. “People forget that Asafa is a 9.8 runner all the time,” Bolt said.
“It was good to have someone pushing me. I normally come from the back, that’s how I run. But I still feel I need to get consistency with my race. My start is letting me down a bit. I am not in the shape yet where I can say that no one can beat me. I am working on getting into that shape so I can be confident that no one can beat me.”
Despite the loss, Powell was encouraged by the narrowness of his defeat. “People have said that I fold under pressure and I started to believe it, so today I showed myself that I can do it,” he said. “In such a fast race, it’s been four years since I was that close to him.”
Meanwhile, another of the sport’s greats, reigning Olympic 5000m champion and world record-holder Kenenisa Bekele, is in danger of losing the chance to defend his Olympic title after he was the fifth Ethiopian across the finish line in the 5000m.
Dejen Gebremeskel won in 12:58.92, Bekele’s younger brother Tariku was fourth (13:00.41), just ahead of his sibling, who still set a season’s best of 13:00.54.
He is now ranked fifth nationally and needs to get himself into the top three.