Justin Gatlin is the best starter in the business.
He is probably the best starter the 100m sprint has ever seen, almost as if he is the retort of the starter’s gun and not simply a reaction.
He does not get up at all, his upper body staying as low as much as is humanly possible without tipping over.
The initial strides are short, eventually lengthening out as he straightens, by which time he is generally ahead of the field.
That start is something Gatlin has completely remodelled since his return to sprinting in 2010 after a ban for doping, a remodelling done by his coach Dennis Mitchell, a former sprinter, and Ralph Mann, a biomechanist with USA Track & Field.
Much of what they have done with Gatlin was detailed in a piece in the July-August issue of Popular Mechanics.
They changed his stride, cut down his weight and reduced his body fat percentage.
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Mann’s role in transforming that start, in particular, has been instrumental, applying a computer model he has developed over years of watching and filming the best runners.
All of it is what has made Gatlin the best sprinter of the day. Almost. It is what partially explains why he is, at 34, still a champion sprinter. Almost.
Because if you can have sympathy for Gatlin – and there is at least no reason to be vindictive, given that whatever the circumstances of his bans, he has served his time and will be disparaged for the rest of his life – it is that he is almost, but not quite.
Almost, but not quite the greatest sprinter of our day because more often than not he has come up against the greatest sprinter not of the day but of all time.
Unequivocally, as clear as the sun burns every day and the moon lights up each evening, Usain Bolt is the greatest sprinter we have ever seen.
On Sunday night in Rio, an entire stadium in thrall to his presence, much of the world rapt through their television screens, Bolt claimed a third successive gold medal in the 100m finals; Beijing, London and now Rio an inerasable geographical imprint in the fable of Bolt.
A 100m race, especially one with Bolt in it, carries certain expectations. That way we have been spoilt, looking, hoping for sub-9.7 second times.
So in that sense, a winning time of 9.81 on Sunday is not one we will remember in the same way that we remember his Berlin run of 9.58, when he blew our minds.
In that sense this was not that race. Bolt will be 30 next Sunday, these are his last Games and certainly they are Gatlin’s too.
Bolt is coming off a hamstring strain and Gatlin’s ankle has troubled him over the last few months.
But in the compelling interplay between the two, the race had an allure, right from the moment, predictably, Gatlin was roundly booed and Bolt wildly cheered.
Gatlin, as he was always going to do, got off to a blistering start.
By the halfway stage he was ahead of the rest of the field, maybe even by as much as a metre. Bolt has never been about his starts though.
He always starts poorly, hampered by his own lanky frame and it takes him time to rise upright.
Once he is up, however, there is no stopping him and the sheer length of his strides makes no deficit safe. And so it was that after the halfway mark, he did not so much as chase Gatlin and the rest down as obliterate them and their ambitions.
So forceful was this middle burst that by the end Bolt was far ahead enough to slow down as the finish line approached and still finish, in real time, 0.08 seconds ahead of Gatlin.
In figurative terms, it may as well have been an hour.
Everyone else strained, ducking into the finish as decorum demands. Bolt burst through head high, chest out, to leave nobody in any doubt as to his superiority, thumping his chest as he crossed.
This little conceit we happily allow, not least because it reinforces that adage, especially relevant for Gatlin – you can start as well as anyone ever has but it matters only how you finish.
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