The Hindu Business Line : Chasing the thunder

Do you feel relaxed, agitated, aggressive or peaceful? I don’t know; edgy might be the appropriate word. You are literally on the edge, the gun goes off and you launch into the precipice. It’s all about how well you keep your senses about you in those less than ten seconds to an outcome, like a base jumper who converts what looks a sheer suicide into a controlled descent.

I am sure Gay would sense the restless crowd; yet he has to catch that gun, hear it clearer than your heartbeat in an arena bursting to exhale. Russell Crowe tells Sharon Stone to listen for the whir in the machinery before the clock strikes and guns blaze in The Quick and the Dead.

Do athletes train their ears too? Perhaps there is gain in telepathy; you read the gathering storm in the stadium, the anticipation of battle and that electric signal of a decision to fire, made in the head and transmitted to the trigger.

Sixth sense

Who knows? In a race over one hundred metres, measured to milliseconds and played back for analysis, even that sixth sense plays a role in shaping perfection.

Usain Bolt in the field makes a huge difference. He is at once the inspiration and the nemesis; six feet five inches tall with a stride that Gay could sleep in and a speed that improves just as much as the American keeps catching up.

I am told there is technique to the way Bolt runs. All I see is the next stage in human evolution. Was Bolt meant to run? Or should he have been a basketball player? I don’t know although I suspect the only way he can be tamed is to have the NBA stars to stop playing and start running. It’s like talking about Michael Phelps. Made for the pool, they said, with arms like albatross wings and a powerful torso, longer than the legs.

Wonder what the guy in the next lane thought? What do you go back home and tell your people — “I won a medal”; or, “I was next to Michael Phelps”.

The way these races end, it is usually the latter. Competing is a hard thing to do. Never is it as severe as when you are normal and down in the pecking order. If you are Bolt, it’s plain and simple — keep winning till the cows come home or till those tall Masai warriors in Africa abandon their herds and lions for the race track. The problem is —what if you are five feet eleven inch-Gay and always next to Bolt.

Nobody remembers the second placed. We forget the also ran; then regard the fourth, the third and the second with incremental gaps. A gulf separates them and the first. There are no milliseconds in human perception. The market stole that ability. Nobody remembers the best sporting story from Beijing — Shawn Crawford, promoted to silver after Churandy Martina was disqualified, subsequently turned over that medal to Martina despite the rejection of appeal against Martina’s disqualification.

Few would remember that Gay is a former gold medallist, someone who swept the honours in short distance runs just two years ago. Nobody would remember that at Berlin on the week-end, second placed-Gay got past Asafa Powell.

For the world, the singular outcome was that freak in front making mincemeat of his timing at the Olympics. 9.58 seconds — whoever dreamt that would happen? Only students of Boltology did.

They had forecast 9.55 based on the 22-year old athlete’s improving performance, technique (I still fail to see that one from my armchair) and penchant to decelerate and celebrate ahead of finish — which only rubs it in for those competing against lightning Bolt.

It’s like — I caught up with the thunder long after the lightning had struck. Bolt is now talking 9.4.

I wonder what it’s like to be Tyson Gay.

(The author is a Mumbai-based freelance writer.)