Bolt had a gift for making the impossible seem easy but his success was based on mental resolve as well as electric paceSomething you may not know about me: there is almost no set of circumstances – personal, professional, medical – in which I will not drop everything to watch Usain Bolt. Naturally, my personalised YouTube algorithm has already known this for some time, and will now instantly recommend me a selection of his greatest hits whenever I log in. “Usain Bolt | IAAF Daegu 2011 (200m s/f)”: yes please! “Bolt beats Gatlin | 2015 World Championships [HD]”: click! “Men’s 200m final | London 2017”: er, I think you’ll find Bolt didn’t run the 200 metres in London that year....
Bristol City celebration and Cricket World Cup final were among the highlights in a year when sport too often seemed to reflect the corrosion of the world around itThe sight of Bristol City’s manager sweeping up a 10-year-old ballboy in a dance of pure joy to celebrate their team’s last-minute cup victory over mighty Manchester United last week added a note of sweetness to a year of conflict and contradictions. Many sports lovers had found themselves spending too much time in 2017 worrying about the integrity of what they were being asked to applaud: the integrity of the competitor, the integrity of the competition.From state-sponsored doping to tax avoidance, from child-abuse cover-ups to corruption in sport’s most powerful governing bodies, so...
The selfless champion and great entertainer will leave a void in the athletics world no one can possibly fill – so what happens when he retires?The penultimate act of Usain Bolt’s career, if all goes according to plan, should begin just before 9.45pm on Saturday night with a crashing tsunami of sound, then the sight of thousands of mobile phone lights dancing deliriously around the London Stadium. The coolest man in sport will briefly bask in the crowd’s affections and then – 41 strides and 100 metres later, if all goes to plan – revel in his glory. Yet as Bolt strikes his familiar To Da World pose and collects his 12th world championship title, the worries about what happens...
The meagre crowds at UK Athletics trials suggest the sport desperately needs a boost. Can the next wave of British stars provide it in London?A tale of two cities. The best of times, and the worst of times.First – Ostrava on a molten Wednesday night for two hours of athletics’ greatest hits. Usain Bolt wins the 100m and spends an hour smiling for selfies; Wayde van Niekerk shatters the 300m world record; David Rudisha suffers a shock 1,000m defeat; Mo Farah gallops away to another 10,000m victory to booming bellows of “Mo! Mo!”. Fireworks off the track and on it. A sellout 30,000 crowd, thirsty and delirious, lapped it up. Related: Dina Asher-Smith limps back into frame for world championships...