Blake Murphy Sports Writing

Title: Usain The Indescribable
Date: August 21, 2009
Original Source: The On Deck Circle
Synopsis: With Usain Bolt destroying records left and right, I took a moment out just to appreciate.

So…Usain Bolt is alright. I mean, he’s definitely not the worst.

He has me speechless, if that poor introduction didn’t tip you off. He is dominating everyone. He may actually be too good. Well, at least too good for me to effectively write about him. This is going poorly.

But what can you expect? I’m just a meager earthling, a wannabe sports writer, a mere mortal. How can I put finger to keyboard in a way that appropriately appreciates The Fastest Man on the Planet. Scratch that, The Fastest Man in the Universe. And Usain…I apologize if that statement is not profound enough to encompass your almighty dominance.

What’s G? G is very very Good. It’s appropriate that Lil’ Wayne does the voiceover for those commercials, because Usain is not the same, he is a Martian.

Yeah, if you didn’t turn on Sportscentre yesterday…uhh, Bolt broke another record. His own record, again, of course, because he is the only sprinter with records left to break. Just how good is Usain Bolt? In a word, Untouchable.

He really needs no hyping. This article is pointless. By now, you probably know what the following tables have to say – Bolt is the greatest, ever, and by far. Bret Hart, step aside, because this is truly the best there is, best there was, and best there ever will be.

Yawn. The guy is ridiculous. Oh, and they don’t let him run the 400m so he can focus on 100m and 200m. They said the same thing about 200m until he demanded to be able to run it, so it would not surprise me at all if a year or two from now I have to expand that table to include the 400m race.

He has greatly improved his out-of-the-blocks reaction time (now less than 0.15 seconds), has a school-zone speed limit fastest top speed (he was clocked at 37.5 KM/H as he slowed down at the end of his record-setting 200m run), and, perhaps most impressively, he just set two world records in the same week.

He’s not just the best; he is consistent, he has endurance, and he is very clearly dedicated to becoming better. These are all marks of a true champion.

But remarkably, he hasn’t been embraced as such. People seem taken aback by his superstar demeanor. That is, he’s flashy, he’s media savvy, he does a jig after victories, lets up in races, has a signature pose, does Gatorade commercials…he is a character in every sense of the word. Personally, I love it, and I think he can be a great ambassador for all of track and field. Some people have been slow to adopt him as a favorite, preferring their stars to be more Tiger Woods than Terrell Owens.

Regardless, there is no denying that Bolt is the best. Other sprinters wax poetic about his skills and stand in awe of him. He beat the next fastest man by more than half a second yesterday, a ridiculous victory margin of 3.2%.

There is no catching him. There is no defeating him. And as I’ve now shown, there is no describing him.

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